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Fronde's Cnisade-Both Sides. 



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LECTURES BY 

VERY REV. T. N. BURKE, O. P., 

JOHN MITCHEL, 

WENDELL PHILLIPS, 



AND 



JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 

f 

* IN SUMMING UP THE CONTROVERSY ; WITH THE 

JLiTFE AIND LABORS OF FATHKBt BURKE. 

By James W. CBrhcn; 



• AKD EDITORIAL ARTICLES OP THE LEADING JOURNALS OF THE COUNTRY 

4 REGARDING THE DEBATE. 



ILLUSTRATED. 



PRICE TWENTY FIVE-CENTS. 



NEW YORK: 
J. W. O'BRIEN, PUBLISHER, 

142 Nassau Street. 
1873. 



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FROUDE'S CRUSADE— BOTH SIDES. 



LECTURES 



BT 



VERY REV. T. N. BURKE, 0. P. , 
JOHN MITCHEL, 
WENDELL PHILLIPS, 

AND 

MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 

IN SUMMING UP THE CONTEOVERSy, 

WITH THE 

By JAMES W. O'BEIEN. 

A2a> EDIXORIAIi ARTICLES OF THE LEADING JOURNALS OP THE COUNTBT 
REGARDING THE DEBATE. 



ILLUSTRATED. 




NEW YORK: 
J. W. O'BRIEN, PUBLISHER, / 

• 1^ Nassau Street, 

1872. r 



Entered acoordiBg to act of Congress in the year 1872 hf 

J. W. O'BRIEN, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washingtoa. 



<0^ 






PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 



■fjt.. 



The lectures of the Very Rev. Father Burke, Mr. Froude, John 
Mitchel, and Wendell Phillips, on the Anglo-Irish controversy, whick 
we present in this publication, exhibit the drift and spirit of the entire 
discussion. They form, it may be said, the final summing np of the 
case, preparatory to its being committed to the jury for their verdict, as 
proposed by the English advocate. It seemed fail- to give the English- 
man's case, as he stated it, side by side with the. Irish defence. So we 
give, in the first place, Mr. Fronde's review of Father Bnrke, and then 
the rejoinder of the Irish Dominicarn — poison and antidote together. — 
Then John Mitchel's lecture, — remarkable for the fervor, brilliancy, and 
learning which give to the writings of this eminent Irish patriot the 
greatest cliarra of any in the language. Wendell Phillips' trenchant 
review of Froude, couched in the magnificent language of that peerless 
orator of America, and analyzing the Englishman and his cause — ■ 
rather dissecting them as with the keen blade of a surgeon — is one 
of the most notable documents which the controversy has called forth, 
The sketch of Father Burke and the editorial articles of the leading 
American journals are instructive and important. 

Accur^e and complete reports of all these lectures, taken specially 
for the publisher by the most accomplished stenographers of New 
York, and carefully revised before printing, secure to the reader the 
benefit of the best light shed upon this question by the very ablest 
jninds. By presenting them in this cheap and convenient form, it is 
aimed to secure the attention of many who might not be reached in any 
»ther way. Those who are induced to read this little woi'k will doubt- 



fi PUBLISHER'S PBEFACE. 

Sfiss be eager to extend their inquiries farther into the subject by pro 
«ariMg the larger publications regarding it. Before the deUvery of 
F'Ather Btirke's lecture in Brooklyn, the publisher obtained the consent 
"^ihc Dominican autlioritie.s in this city to report and publish it in this 
,>olk'»tion. Tlie information and arguments contained in these foux 
ecfcurcs should be known to every Irish man and woman, especially in 
%lue lanQ^ swbej.'e we are deeply concerned in the issue as here made 

J. W. O'B. 
mw York, Dec. 28, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE— Hi.^ Cstre&t ka 
L'eland, Rome and America. — His infliience on the Trish-Ameri-v 
can element. — His characteristics as a preacher. — His contrO'- 
ver sy with Froudc — The Verdict, etc -. It 

II. 

FROUDE'S SUMMlM UP AGAINST FATHER BURKS. 
— Lectiu-e in New York by Mr. James Anthony Frouda, Nov. 
30, 1872, in reply to Father Barkers series .,. = .... W 

III. 

FATHER BURKE'S FINAL ANSWER TO FROUDE.~Ee- 
view of the Englishman's series of lectures and refutation of Ms 
closing calumnies against Ireland. — Lecture delOTere<J Ib 
Brooklyn by the Great Dominican on Dec. 17th, mm. gS 

IV. 

FROUDE'S DESCRIPTION OF ^'THE IRISH OELTS.^\.. 5S 

JOHN MITGHEL'S GREAT LECTURE in reply to Fronde- 
delivered in New York, Dec. 20th, 1872 ....... . .^. » 

VI. 

FROUDE'S "CODE OF'pRINCIPLES," as stated in his justi- 
fication of " The English in Ireland." 1^ 

VII. 

WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON FROUDE. Delivered 

in Tremont Temple, Boston \... IS 

VIII. 
" ERIN'S FLAG,"— Poem, by Rev. A. J. Ryan » 



ERIN'S FLAG. 



BY REV. ABRAM J. RYAN. 



[The following beatitiful productioa deserves to be rescued from the 
ephemeral fate of a newspaper article. We take it from the New Ov- 
]ea.ns Mbrninff Star. Father R3'au — "the poet priest of the South"— 
has never written an3'thing sweeter, or more electrifying, or more ex 
quisite in a literary sense, than this. ] 

Unroll Erin's flag ! flinf; its folds to the breeze 1 

Let it float o'er tfio land, 1 -t it wave o'er the seas; 

Lift it out of the dust — let it wave as of yore, 

When its chiefs with their clans stood around it and swore 

That never!— no ! — never, while God gave the life, 

And they had an arm and a sword for the strife, 

That never I — no !— never, that banner should jield 

As long as the heart, of a Celt was its shield; 

While the hand of a Celt had a we.apon to wield. 

And his last drop of blood was unshed on the field. 

Lift it up! wave it high !— 'ti.? as bright as of old ! 

^ot a stain on its Green, not a blot on its gold. 

Though the woes and the wrongs of three hundred long yeari, 

Have drenched Erin'.s Sunburst with blood and with tears; 

Though the clouds of oppressioii enshrou:! it in gloom, 

And around it the thunders of tyranny boom. 

Look aloft ! look aloft! lo! the clouds drifting by, 

There's a gleam through the gloom, there's a light in the sky. 

•Tis the Surbnrst resplendent — far, flasljing onhigh; 

Erin's dark night is waning, her d-ay-dawnls nigh ! 

Lift it up ! lift it up ! the old Banner of Green ; 
TJie blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen, 
What ! — though the tyrant has trampled it down, 
Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown ? 
What !— tliough for ages it droops in the dust, 
Shall it droop thus forever ?— No! No! God is .iust! 
Take it up ! take it up ! from the tyrant's foul tread. 
Let him tear the Green Flag — we'll snatch its last shred, 
And beneath it we'll bleed as our forefather's bled, 
And we'll vow by the dust in the graves of our dead ; — 

And we'll swear by the blood that the Briton has shed — 

And we'll vow by the wrecka^vhich thnnigh Erin he spread — 

And we'll swear by the thoijlmids who famished, unfed, 

Died down in thi; ditches — wild howling for bread. 

And we'll vow by our heroes, whose spirits have fled; 

And we'll swear by the bones in each coflinless bed, 

That we'll bittle the Briton through daugiu- and dread ; 

That we'll cling to the causi; which we glory to wed, 

'Till the gleam of our steel and the shock of our lead 

Shall prove to the foe thatwe meant what we said— 

That we'll lift up the Gbeen, and we'll tear down the Rsb I 

Lift up the Green Flag! ohi it wants to go home; 
Full long has its lot been to wander and roam ; 
It has followed the fate of its sons o'er thi#\v.orld, 
But its folds, like their hopes, nre not faded or furled ; 
Like a weary-winged bird, to the East and the West, 
t has flitted and fled— hut it never shall rest, 
'Till, pluming its pinions, it sweeps o'or the main, 
And speeds to the shores of its old home again, 
Where its fetterless folds, o'er each mountain and plain, 
Shall wave with a glory that never shall wane. 
I 

Take it up ! Take it up ! bear it back from afar— 
That Banner must blaze 'mid the lightnings of war • 
Lay your hands on its folds, lift you'* i-yos to the sky, 
And Bwear that you'll bear it triumphant or die. — 
AnA shout (o the c'ans scattered far o'er the earth. 
To Join in the march to the land of their birth, 
And wherever the IJ.'ciles, 'neath heaven's broad dome, 
flave been fated to .suffer, to sorrow and roam, 
They'll bound on the sea, and oway o'er the foam, 
They'll march to the music of " Home, sweet Home." 



YEM KEV. THOMAS N. BUKKE, 0. P., 

SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND LABORS. 



HY JAMES ^A/■. O'BRIEN, 



So mucfi of this book has beea contributed by the Very Rev. Father Burke, that 
Owe readers will doubtless be interested by a brief sketch of this extraordinary Irislb* 
m«n and priest. We therefore have collected such facts as were attainable, and 
present a short narrative of his magnificent career in this'country and Europe. For 
the particulars relating to Father Burke, previous to his advent on this continent, the 
wriier is indebted to a gentleman already mentioned. 

FATHER BURKE IN IRELAND AND ROME; 

The great Irish Dominican— the preacher of the " Order of Preachers," the Very 
Rksv. Thomas N. Burke, whose portrait we give in this work — is a native of the town 
of Galway, where his parents were in comfortable circumstances. He was born in 
l&SO, being therefore only forty-two years old. At a very early age he gave evidence 
of the ability for which he has since been distinguished, even among an Order of 
divines famed for producing some of the greatest lights of the Catholic Church. As 
a boy his natural gifts as a speaker attracted attention : he was the " orator " of his 
schoolmates and associates ; and at a time when the agitation of public affairs in 
Ireland had brought out a host of intellectual giants, foremost among whom were th© 
enthusiastic Nationalists, who, in the name of " Young Ireland," had sprung into the 
front ranks of their country's struggle, it was confidently predicted, that " young 
Tom Burke" would, at a not distant day, make a figure as prominent as any of them 
in the political arena. But Providence had destined him for a different field of use- 
fulness, and his own inclinations led him to make choice of a religious life, at a period 
when the ideas of most youths have scarcely received the bias that affects their after 
coarse. At the age of seventeen (in 1847), ke went to Rome, and from thence to 
Perugia, where he entered the Order of St. Dominic, commencing his novitiate and 
the study of philosophy. From thence he^as again sent to Rome, where he studied 
theology at the College of the Minerva and Sancta Sabina. After having thus spent 
five years in Italy, he was sent by the Superiors of his Order to England, where he 
was ordained. He spent four years on the English mission, in Gloucestershire; and 
was then sent to Ireland, to found a novitiate and house of studies for his Order, at 
Tallaght nea*- Dublin. This he successfully accomplished ; and for the next seven 
years he was busily employed in the care 6f the new establishment, and in giving . 
missions in different parts of Ireland, the results of which foreshadowed the great 
and constantly augmenting success he was yet to attain as one of the most effective 
preachers of the Dominican community. 

He was next sent to Rome as Superior of St. Clement's — the oldest Basilica in the 
*' Eternal City " — around which cluster so many glorious reminiscences of the zeal, 
virtue and learning of the Irish Dominicans. He was not long thqre when his ser- 
vices were put in requisition. The late Cardinal Wiseman, while in Rome, had been 
wont to deliver the customary Lenten sermons in English, at the Church of Sancta 
Maria del Popolo. When he was raised to the dignity of Cardinal Archbishop of 
Westminster, and had to proceed to England, his place was taken by the present 
Archbishop Manning. The news of Cardinal Wiseman's death reached Rome before 
the commencement of the Lenten season; Dr. Manning was obliged to leave suddenly 
for London ; and Father Burke was called upon, at short notice, to supply his place ; 
which he did with such wonderful power as to astonish all Rome with the brilliancy 
of his talents, the grandeur of his conceptions, and the fervor and piety which br-eathed 



S LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE; 

through all his discourses. He continued to preach these Lenten sermone for fiv© 
years. His last appearance in that capacity, was, we believe, immediately previous 
to the assembliDg of the Vatican Council. There are few Americans who have beoH 
in Eome that have not heard him ; and his fame as a preacher is as well known 
throughout this Continent as it is in his native land. Since Father Burke's d«parture 
from Kome the English Lenten sermons at Sancta Maria have been discontinued ; and 
the Italian " occupation " has now so altered the state of affairs that there is no 
telling if they will ever be renewed in that church. 

After his retuni to Ireland, Father Burke was attached to St. Saviour's, the Do- 
minican church, in Dublin, which replaced the well-known old chapel in Denmark 
street; but his time was constantly occupied in preaching charity sermons in all 
parts of the three kingdoms, and in conducting retreats for the clergy, of which he 
has given on an average twelve every year wnce 1859, when he began by giving one- 
to one hundred and fifty students at Mayasoth College. 

HIS ADVENT IN AMERICA. 

In the early part of 1872 he visited this country, having been appointed by the 
authorities of his order, Visitor to the Houses of the Dominican Community on thi» 
Continent. In this great country a man of his mould cannot long remain in the retire- 
ment so grateful to natures like his. Yielding, perforce, as it were, to the entreaties 
of his brother priests, to gratify the yearning of their flocks to hear one who was said 
to be a true type at once of Ireland's priesthood, and of her orators, he attracted 
multitudes to drink in his eloquence and his teachings. The other races that dwell 
upon this land, as well as his own race, contributed large numbers to his congrega- 
tions. While most came to applaud and admire, there were, of course, some of a 
more critical disposition ready to analyze and comment on what they heard so mucb 
of. Criticism is something the average American citizen clings to as one of the - 
Inalienable rights. Of criticism our nationality has had a full share in this country. 

Tliis spirit of criticism applied to Father Burke by the ablest minds in America, 
redounded at once to the glory of Ireland. It was a triumph for us all. Our repre* 
sentative priest and preacher had all the qualifications of a great orator — a dignified 
presence, graceful and vigorous action in geaiiculation, and a fine baritone voice, rich 
in the musical intonations in which the Celtic tongue excels all others. He is a 
thorough linguist, and preaches in several of the Continental languages with a| much 
facility as he does in English. Of the impression he makes on all who hear him 
volunves might be written ; but we shall content ourselves with citing, on that point, 
the judgmont, of a gentleman, not of our race, but who is entitled by his lear»nig, hia 
experience and his position as one of the ablest writers in America, to give a reliable 
opinion as to^the qualities of^a Catholic preacher. Mr, McMaster, in the New York 
J'reeman^s Journal, of March 9tli, 1872, says: 

♦' It is several months ago that the Very Eev. Thomas Burke, ofj the order of St 
Dominic, by the command of the General of the Order, came to this country as 
Visito-for of his Order. Fiither Thomas Burke is known all over Europe, as a great 
apostolic preacher. It is especially in Komo where most of his life has been passed, 
that his reputation is so great. He has passed very quietly through this country, and 
has visited all the houses of his Order. Only, wherever he goes, after he has 
preached once, the faithful flock around the pulpit, and around the church, if he 
preaches a second time, as bees gather round abed of jessamines. In humiliation oi 
soul we acknowledge that we had little care to hear Father Burke preach. We 

, plead, in extenuation, that an experience of twenty-five years, of ' grand orators,' has 
led U8 to expect in any one of them, to find a grand humhiig. Even in tho Catholic 

.* pulpit, of those rcnoivned for ' extraordiiary eloquence,* we can eount on tho fingers 
of one hand — leaving the thumb uncounted-^ull we have ever heard that did not, in 
fifteen miautes, make us wish his place was filled by some one who would be frivins 



LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE. 7 

us a ample Catholic instruction, adapted to ours, arid other humblest iutellects. So 
we acKiiowledge a prejudice against pulpit celebrities. 

•" But what kind of a preacher is this Dominican Father Burke ? What is the 
power by which he holds hushed and breathless, each one m a crowded coagregation ; 
alike the most learned and critical, and the rough men with little either of sentiment 
or education f A natural gift of oratory no one can mistake in him. He has the 
richness of voice, and the persuasiveness of accent, that God has lavished so largely 
on his countrymen. But these are ' tricks of the tongue,' that the man of trained 
intellect can arm himself against, even while he admires them. But Fra. Burke 
disarms this trained intellectual listener, because in him, it is neither trick nor art- 
" It is the gift God has given Lim, and that he has consecrated to God ! The honey 
dew that drops from his lips is distilled from a soul consecrated to God. and an intel- 
lect saturated and steeped in the learning and piety of the Saints and Doctors of the 
Church." 

HIS INFLUENCE UPON THE IRISH AMERICAN ELEMENT. 

The result of his influence was a complete revolution of sentiment in this country, 
regai'ding the Church and the Irish race and nation. The Irish mechanic was no 
longer slighted in his shop. After " Father Tom Burke " had come to town and ey= 
pounded some topic connected with his religion or his race, that town was a brighter 
place for his countrymen on the morrow ; they were hailed by men whose former preju- 
dices had been swept away by the flood of light he poured upon^them and the Irish mer- 
ohantihad a heartier grasp from the 'strait' "church member" who had never 
before seen anything to admire in the religion or national record of our people. Our 
paths were made pleasanter by Father Burke. Avenues of advancement were 
opened by the force of his great mind and soul and our own people held a higher head 
and a firmer step in this land, for this Irish priest and patriot planted in their breast* 
• more generous pride in their ancient nation and a more glowing devotion to th« 
glorious religion fcliat had sanctified and crowned it in the past and gave such chaiii« 
pions as this Dominican preacher to plead its cause, defend its history and assert its 
ligiits. Many and ranny a young fellow born of Irish parents has been saved from 
that lamentable indifference, which we see sometimes, towards our creed and country 
by the voice of tiiis gifted Irishman whose^towering intellect compelled admiration and 
whose priestly character added to that the sentiment of religious respect and enthu- 
siasm. Thus this humble Friar that has come to us from Ireland has perhaps 
unconsciously wrought out a revolution here in oar favor and has effected a social and 
religious revival and reformation among us which will cause his name long to be 
remembered with gratitude everywhere and will produce blessings here long after he 
is called to his reward. 

Invitations poured in on him from iill sides to deliver lectures and sermons. He 
preached the Lenten sermons in the Dominican church of St. Vincent Ferrer, N. Y.and 
people from all parts of the city and surrounding towns flocked to his church every 
evening, and on returning to their homes spread stories of the Irish Friar's wonderful 
eloquence. From this time it became utterly impossible for Father Burke to resist 
the demand of the people to hear him. Deputations came hundreds of miles to procure 
his services. So it came to pass that the great cities of the East and "West have 
heard his voice for Church and Fatherland. In St. Louis an audience of fifteen 
thousand greeted him ; while forty thousand people, the largest audience ever drawn 
together in America by one man, assembled ,in- the Great Musical "Coliseum" in 
Boston to hear him discourse on " the future of the Irish race." The effect of his 
eloquence, his learning and his devotion, to his church and country, was felt on all 
claBscs of citizens, for Americans of every creed joined his own countrymen in these 
populai ovations to genius and patriotism which they saw reflected in Father Burke» 



8 LlJt'E AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE 

HIS REPLY TO FROUDE. 

Perhaps the most opportune of all Father Burke's great achievements for his people 
•fvas his reply to Mr. James Anthony Froude, the English historian, who came over to" 
attack not otily the historical record of the Iri«h nation, but the record and character 
of the Irish people ; thus assailing our position as citizens of this commonwealth. He 
made his dtiut in New York under the auspices of certain clergymen, bitterly pre- 
judiced agaimst our religion, and having gained a hearing through the press of the 
Metropolis, he delivered his series of lectures in the chief cities of the Union, avowing 
his purpose to be the setting against us of the public sentiment of this Republic, and 
gaining its sympathy tor England in her treatment of Ireland. The Irish citizens in 
every walk of life found themselves arraigned by one who came on his mission with 
the semi-official endorsement of the members of the English Cabinet, provided witb 
every weapon which long study and research and governmental resources could sup- 
ply. They fell back on Father Burke, calling on him to step forth for their protection 
and defence. Overwhelmed with work as he was, laboring to meet a round of engage- 
ments hanging over him for months, and extending for months ahead, to his glory be 
it recorded he promptly an.swered this call, gave up every engagement, and gallantly 
took up the glove of the English'historian, and ^defended his country and people in 
such fashion that the whole preas and people of America cried out : " Well done, 
Father Burke. You have demolished the English case j you have met false history 
with true history ; you have overthrown the Englishman on his own ground, and the 
case of Ireland stands before us to-day as it never stood before. Your pleadings has 
irrevocably secured for your country and people the sympathy, respect and honor oi 
America !" Truly a noble victory nobly won. The humble Friar, rising from hi» 
Bpiritual ministrations among his children and compatriots and beating back the pur- 
suer sent on their track, by the very spirit and power that banished them from home, 
to blast their fame and check their onward career in the far laud to which they were 
driven, and in whose generous bosom they were cheiished, presents a spectacle mORt 
Bublime in its heroic devotion. 

Father Burke's series of Lectures in reply to Mr. Froude, were given in ihe 
Academy of iliisic, New York, beginning on November 12th, 1872, and gained for him, 
as a profound historical scholar and philosopher, and an advocate of superior skill and 
power, kiurels as rich as those he had already won in the pulpit and platform as one of 
the noblest preachers and lecturers of the age. The verdict for which Mr. Froude 
had applied to the American public against Ireland was rendered on Father Burke's 
demand against England. In the words of one of the leading public newspapers, 
Father Burke in his very first lecture' utterly destroyed the cause for which the his- 
torian came to plead, and " set the whole current of Ameiican opinion against England 
with tenfold more force than it had previous to the English opening of the contro, 
▼ersary." At this writing it can only be stated that Father Burke has astounded both 
oppoiibnts and friends by the tremendous power of his reply, but we predict that il 
will be only a very short time until this work of his shall be recognized in both 
heDiisphercs as the greatest achievement for Ireland m this age, and a feat destined to 
stand in history beside, if not above, the Religious Emancipation wrought out by 
O'Connell, and the Legislative Emancipation by Grattan and the Volunteers. For, in 
the providence of God, it seems destined to create such a sentiment throughout the 
world as will demand the cessatifin of the outrages of England's domination over 
Ireland, and will eventually lead to the entire emaucipation of the Irish nation f>'Oin 
tku EnglisU yoke. 

THE VERDICT. 

As matter of historic record we here insert the emphatic pronouncements of the 
great organs of American thought and opinion upon tl .^ ,,>ie.<tion submitted to t'y»i» 
by the English histm-iau and argued bufure them by the lr.«h Friar. 



LIFH AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE. 

The New York Trihune after priiitin;:; both sides renders jiidgminit- as fullovvs: 
" In several respects the two champions are well mntclied. Mr. Frondo is an admir- 
able representative of the Enj^lishinen who subdued IreLiad, depopulated her fairest 
territories, crushed her national cliurch, and have held the island for 700 years in 
uneasy subjection. Ka speaks for those who believe the conquest jiistified and the 
English rule a blessing, for thosje who look upon the Irish as an inferior race, inca- 
pable of self-government, and not to be encouraged when they claim the same political 
privileges as other people. Father Burke, on the contrary, is a typical Irishman of 
the best class, eloquent, learned, patriotic and devoted to the creed which ha* 
influenced so strongly the Irish character and Irssh history, and which Mr. Froude 
80 cordially detests. The people of the United States, who are invited to be the 
judges of tliis debate will follow both sides with the deepest interest. It may be 
doubted, however, whether the English people will be grateful to their champion for 
his rather Quixotic enterprise. He has come here to convince us that our sympathy 
for Ireland has been misapplied, and the result of his endeavor may perhaps be to 
aro'^se a warmer and more general sympathy for that unfortunate countiy than we 
aver felt befoi-e. We will not say that his lectures have intensified the hatred of Irish- 
Americans for the English nation; for that feeling was already as strong as it could 
be; but they have revived controversies upon which prudent Englishmen prefer to 
be silent, and have resulted in teaching native Americans more ab':)ut the real griev- 
ances of Ireland than they knew before or were likely ever to learn from St. Patrick's 
Day orations and Fenian manifestoes. Father Burke speaks through the press to all 
the people of the United States. Wherever the English historian goes, the forcible 
words of the Irish orator will follow him — nay, the Dominican preacher has already 
spoiled the disposition of Mr. Fronde's audiences in many of the cities which he has 
still to visit. If there is to be a frank discussion of the differences between Ireland 
and Er.gland, there can hardly be a doubt about the verdict of any impartial com- 
munity. It is useless to defend the past. The most that a patriotic Englishman caa 
now do is to reform the present." 

The New York World, in an elaborate consideration of tlie controversy, discourses 
tiius: 

"Persons of a poetical turn of mind maybe pardoned if they discover a certain 
aesthetic and historic fitness in the fact that Ireland, suddenly and sharply arraigned 
a.\i the bar of public opinion in America, finds ready at hand in her cause a most stal- 
wart and skillful champion in the person of a distinguished Catholic preacher, brought 
to this country from the capitol itself of the Catholic world, on quite another mission. 
What will strike most Americans in this particular we suspect with some surprise is 
the firm texture of the preacher's argument when subjected, in the cool light thrown. 
upon it by the types, to a deliberate comparison with the argument of the historian. 
The advantage is so overwhelmingly on the side of the defence that one is almost 
moved to a kind of pity for the assailant. !»****• 
"The extraordinary skill, grace and eloquence with which the gifted Irish Domini- 
can, Father Burke, is now setting forth in this city the ethical, as coulrasted with 
what, for convenience sake, we may call Mr. Fronde's dynamical view of Anglo-Irish 
history, are admitted on all hands. It is an intellectual pleasure of a very rare kind 
which is afforded us by this admirable orator, and of a kind ^Jiich is growing moro 
and more rare with every passing year. His lectures are rather pleadings than lec- 
tures; and when we consider how great are the chaeges now going on in the methods 
of our jurisprudence, changes themselves imposed by other and equally remarkable 
changes in our methods of business and of social life, it is hardly too much to say that 
Father Burke is perhaps the last adequate representative we are likely in this gener- 
ation to see of the great forensic orators who charmed, and touched, and shoolt out 
fathers at their will » » • Father Burke, has no such special advantage 



10 LIFE ANI> LABORS OF FATHEE BUEKE. 

Kiiien he addresses himself to Americans not of the I^^:h blood in his discussion of the 
purely moral and political aspects of the Anghi-Irish case. And' yet notiiing can be 
more complete than his detiioiistration of the utter ftiilure'and wortlilessness of Mr. 
Froudee's main thesis, that Ireland has deserved her misfortunes because England has 
been able to bring them to pass ; and the circumstances of our position at this time 
make his defence of clear right against mere might not only of particular interest but 
of notable importance to ourselves. On the whole, we suspect the truth is not only 
that Mr. Froude has a bad cause, but that he is singularly unfitted to make that bad 
cause even appear to be a good one. His defects and his qualities alike tell against 
him in the pacific conflict he has invited with this Irish Dominican. ♦ # • 
What Father Burke has most emphatically and convincingly s«id of the political damage 
done to England by the feeling of contempt with which Englishmen have ior centuries 
been trained to regard Irishmen, and of the habit of mind which has led England for 
centuries to deal with Ireland as a country ineradicably hostile, is not only wise in 
itself and valuable for the light it she(is on Irish history; it has a moral and an 
application on this side of the Atlantic also. Father Burke's protest against the 
wortihip of success and the reverence of force merely because it is force, is tremend- 
vously strengthened by the facts which he brings forward to show the bollowness of the 
very success which his antagonist is disposed to worship and the failure of the force 
which his antagonist reverences to accomplish even the tyrannical and unprincipled 
ends to wiiich it was for ages unscrupulously directed. We hardly need the lessor., 
perhaps, which he is thus teaching us, so far as the question of England's relatione 
with Ireland are concerned. A majority of the American people are probably pre- 
pared to accept very readily any demonstration of the mistakes of Great Britain. 
Tlie colonists of America were long looked down upon by their cousins over the 
Atlantic almost or quite ;is contumeiiously as the Irish themselves. 

" One very decided cause of the popular dislike with wkich, iu spite of all the after- 
iinner speeches ever made to tha contrary, England has always been and to a great 
•stent Btili is regarded in this country, must be found in the obstinate indisposition of 
the average British subject to consider the average American citiien as really hit 
equal. The patronizing tone, sometimes supercilious, sometimes affable but always 
ridiculous at once and intolerable, in which America is to this day too often alluded 
to by British writers and speakers, realljf U.ia its way and measure A politicai, 

FERIL." 

The New York Herald says: 

"Though Father Burke disclaimed any desire to wake up revengeful feelings by 
painting too vividly the tyranny and oppression to which the Irish people had been 
subjected, it is difficult to inmgine that any man loving justice and liberty could listen 
unmoved to the recital of robbery and outrage to which the Irish were subjected at 
the hands of Mr. Fronde's ' civilizers.' Unlike Mr. Fmude, the Irish advocate goes 
into the camp of his enemies to seek weapons of defence. Every quotation upon 
which he appealed to the American people for a verdict against the policy of England 
in his native land is drawn fr(im English sources, and some of the most damaging 
evidence is furnished by State papers of England, which Mr. Fronde found it conveni- 
ent to ignore. As the iirraianinent of England's treatment of Ireland proceeds the 
jiosition of .Mr. Froiido becomes more untenable, and tne natural love of Americans for 
jiiBlice makes Ihein sympatiiize rather with tlio people who have been the victims of 
fraud and violence than with I heir oppressors." 

And tiie New York Po«<. edited by one of the most eminent and honored of American 
iu'lilicists, the Venerable William Cuiien Bryant, says of the English advocate and iii» 
case : 

"'I'liiH is not the ordinary case of a dispute over a controverted Iiistorieal fnct, or 
tke surticieucy of the authorities relied upon. It is a much more serious matter. Mr. 



LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHES BUEKS. H 

Froudeia accused 0/ citing from certain documents languago which cannot be found 
there, and of referring to other documents which have no existence, of ornamenting 
his own vvords^with quorati.m marks and references, and of putting into the mouths 
of historical personages of the sixteenth century language and sentiments which first 
«aw the light in the uineteentli century." . 

THE JUDGMENT—" AND COSTS. 

After the third of Father Burke's lectures had been delivered the disastrous conse- 
ijueuces of the contest to the English interest became so evident that the organs ol 
that power recoiled in dismay, and the news came that they wished to demur to the 
iurisdictioii of tlie tribunal cliosen by their apologist and agent. Nay, with the frenzy 
tif biiiiled and alFrighted confederatt's thf-y most ungenerously turned upon their ad- 
vei'tUMius colleague wnd beruted hiui fur his spirited and boM manffiuvre toward 
the accomplishmenL of tlieir common purpose. The NfW York TiJi^une, one of the 
jyrors, thereupon pronounces, on Nov. 2l3t i 

' Mr. Froude's theory of the Irish question is based partly upon philosophical prin- 
ciples, partly upon the story of events in Ireland, which he has constructed from a 
more or less thorough study of contemporary records; and his adversaries object, 
not so much that he has distorted the documents in the possession of the Keeper oJ 
the Records, as that he has taken everything which tells for one side of the .juestion 
and rejected or overlooked almost anything which teils for the other. * * * Mean- 
while, Mr. Froude's championship has been viewed in England with little of the grati- 
tude which one might have sup[)Osed it would inspire. The Times has tivice taken 
him to task for his volunteer advocacy, and reminded him and us that nobody au- 
thorized hiu) to appeal to the public opinion of this country in a case involving Eng- 
land's treatment of a portion of the British empire. ' Nbither England nor Ireland,' 
says the Times, ' can allow America the right thu^ to pronounce a verdict on our re- 
lations to each other.' It reminds hina also that the Irish question is not such a simf 
pie one after all, tlic best men in England finding it 'no easy task to form a clear 
judgment on the tangled skein of right and wrong ;' while the writer in the Daily 
Xeivs goes further, and blames him for undertaking ' to reverse the judgment 
almost unanimously formed by the enlightened public opinion of the present 
day.' It would have been mj/c/i wiser not to touch the ugly business ; but since it has 
been revived, we have only to repeal the advice we gave before — let the discussion be 
as ' thorough ' as one of Strafford's campaigns against the Irish !" 

Evidently the English shall be held to the verdict they invoked; they must abide 
by the issue they have made. Closely following up Father Burke, on the next day 
■after the delivery of his fourth lecture the same journal says: •' Father Burke con- 
tinues his rejoinder to Mf. Froude's statements witli undiminished vigor. His lecture 
last night was compact to sententiousness a^d was delivered to an enthusiastic and 
quickly sympathetic audience." Assuredly there was to be no relaxation in the vigor 
of this pursuit though the foe was in terror apd in fligl.t, for this quiet Dominican 
Friar had said, "I am nx) believer in bad blood: I regret to invite you over theae 
terrible wastes of desolation and of tears ; I would fain not lift the v.il from the 
hideous past, nor renew in your hearts and mine so great a sorrow ; hut when any one 
comes to tell the Amencan people that England's treatment of my country has been 
liberal, generous or just, or to say to them that my race ever suffered the taint of^ 
cowardice to stain their record, if I were on my dying bed 1 would rise and refute 
him." Truly in the Tribune's words it was "an ugly business " for. the historian to 
provoke the dreadful constigation which the Irish scholar and priest was forced to 
administer to England in the cause of liberty and of truth. So ireiaud's answer will 
be heard and borne out to the bitter end. 

After this fourth rejoinder of the Irish Lecturer to the Englishniat ^e Nc ^wk 



12 LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE. 

World sumb np the case to that point. Under the heading of " Froude's Anglo-Irisfe 
Arbitration," it says oa Nov. 22d: " Enghxnd has no luck in her nppeals to arbi- 
tration. At least this is the interpretation, we pre:-ume, which the most candid oi 
Englisliroen will be likely to put upon the recent repeated verdicts which have been 
rendered against their country. The average Briton, of course, will find a less 
abstruse explanation in the fact that her antagonists have been gcouudrels and her 
judges corrupt. * » * The public opinion uf the United States has been appealed 
to by Mr. Froude to hear the case between England and Ireland, and gi7e judgment 
thereupon. "We have heard all that Mr. Froude has to say in his capacity of advocate 
for the defence. We have heard not all, bat nearly all, of the plea of the prosecutioa 
as unexpectedly and most vigorously put forth by an advocate who may well seem to 
the devout Irish Cfvthulics of America to have been providentially sent to them in 
anticipation of Mr. Froude's appeal, since he came among them from the capital of 
Catholic Christendom on quite another mission. Our decisinn has already in sub- 
stance been rendered: Judgment of the lower courts re-affirmed, wif/i cos^s. Wise 
men and prudent will pray only that the costs may not be heavier than the appellant 
dreamf o/wheji he somewhat rashly made his appeal. » » * Mr. Froude would 
neter have brought England up to the bar of American opinion to seek absolution and 
indorsement in the matter of her historical relations with Ireland, had he not felt that 
the dnys of the Henrys and the Cromwells were over now for England. When the 
English Government is trying to make the ancient methods of England unpopular lest 
tlieij return^ to plagite herself, sm English scholar and patriot like Mr. Froude 
ought not to be sacrificed by the English press for doing so much and no more. 
The only fair hold which Mr. Froude gives his home critics, perhaps,, is the tre- 
mendous blunder he has made in the subject on which he seeks arbitration and in the 
court before which he seeks it. The history of England in Ireland is a thoroughly 
good case to let alone, emd a thoroughly lad case to stir. It does not seem so to Mr. 
Froude ; but that is his misfortune originating pretty clearly in the intellectual traits 
which have brought upon him from eo many quarters the charge of tavipcring ttn. 
faivhj xcilli hisiotical docuvients. * * » A writer whose abhorrence of a particu- 
lar woman in history can make him see theatrical affectation even in a calmly heroic 
death, and charge malignant coquetry dashed with purblind fully upon the cleverest 
princess other day in the first anguish of a bereavement which left her a widow at 
eighteen and robbed her of the first crown of Europe, raay easily be capsble of believ- 
ing that the Irish Catholics of 1775 really desired the triumph of George III. over the 
revolted colonies of America, and that England persisted for centuries in trying to 
iteal the whole land of Ireland purely out other desire to plant thereon a lofty and 
ennobling civilization. The u'07idei' is that he sliould come with such propositions 6«- 
fore such a tribunal as the people of the United Slates.* For this the lilnglish news- 
papers are roundly berating him. Americans will be more tolerant but not hat 
avia-.cd." 

After the delivery of the last lecture the several journals of the metropolis gave a 
general review of the controversy. On November L'uth th<.^ New York Herald said: 

The eloquent Dominican, who undertook the defence of Ireland from the charf^es 
made by Mr. Froude againgt her i)eople and their claim to the common right of 
humanity, brought Ins argument to a close last night. We have already spoken of the 
vigor and ablility displayed in the defence, and the signal manner in which the position 
of tho English historian was overthrown The fact is, it did not require one-tenth the 
ability or leafiiing brought to bear on the question by the Irish priest to rofuto the 
pleadings of the Englisli advocate. During the sevi-n hundred years which have passed 
since the struggle between tho Celtic or Irish civilization and tiio Anglo-Norman was 
HinuL'nraffd the story of tho treacheries, the porsecufiona and the m.nssacres by which 
Englanc' has maintained her bold on the " Sister Islo " is too horrible and too ropellant 
to our sense of justice not to enlist ail our sympathies on tho side of the oppressed 
people. There is something sublime Ln tho picture of a people rising superior to fato. 



LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE. 13 

and in spite of defeats, which only stopped short of extermination, accepting again and 
again the issue of battle, succumbing to force, but never abandoaing tiieir cause, which 
must command respect even froni their bitterest foes. Such a pe9ple and such a cf»nse 
woald be sure of a favorable verdict with a less eloquent advocate than Father Burke 
from a freedom aud justice loving nation like America. 

The New York Nation, a critical journal of, the highest repute in literary circlea* 
makes comment upon the Froude enterprise as follows : 

" The men who will heartilly agree with him in believing that the Irish have, on the 
whole, only received their due, are not as a rule fair exponents of the national temper 
or of the tendencies of the national mind. Those who listened ofi Friday night last to 
his picturesque account of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian attempts to pacify Ire- 
land, must have felt in their bones that — in spite of the cheers which greeted seme of 
his more eloquent and some of his bolder passages, and in particular his dauntless way 
ef dealiHg with the Drogheda Massacre — his political philosophy was not one which the 
average American could be got to carry home with him and ponder and embrace. 
Mr. Froude, it must in justice to him be said, by no means throws all the«responsibility 
of Irish misery on Ireland. . He deals out a considerable share of this responsibility to 
England, but then this mode of apportioning it is one which is completely opposed to 
most of the fundamental notions of American pelitics. For instance, his whole treat- 
ment of the Irish hi&tory is permeated by an idea which, whatever marks it may have 
left on American practice in dealing with the Indians, has no place now in American 
political philosophy — we mean what is called in English politics " the imperial idea "— 
the idea, that is, that a strong, bold, and courageous race has a sort of " natural rio-ht " 
to invade the territory of weak, semi-civilized, and distracted races, and undertake 
the task of governing them by such methods as seem best, and at such cost of life as 
may be necessary. This idea is a necessary product of English history ; it is not likely 
to disappear in England as long as she possesses such a school for soldiers and states, 
men as ia furnished by India. Indeed she could not stay in India without some such 
theory to support her troops, but it is not one which will find a ready acceptance here. 
American opinion has, within the last twenty years, run into the very opposite extreme 
and now maintains with some tenacity the right even of barbarous communities to be 
let alone and allowed to work out their own salvation or damnation in their own way. 
There is little or no faith left in this country in the value of super-imposed civilization 
or of '' saperior minds," or of higher organization, while there is a deep suspicion of 
or we might say there is deep hostility towards, all claims to rule based on alleged 
superiority of race, or creed, or class. We doubt if Mr. Froude could have hit on a 
more unpalatable mode, or a mode more likely to clash with the prevailino- tendencies 
of American opinion of defending English rule in Ireland than the argument, that 
Englishmen being stronger aind wiser than Irishmen, Irishmen ought to submit to have 
themselves governed on English ideas whether the^- like it or not He has produced 
tbis argument already in England, and it has elicited there a considerable amount of 
indignant protest. We are forced to say of it here that it is likely to do great mischief 
over and above the total defeat of Mr. Fronde's object in coming to this country. Th# 
Irish iu America are more likely to be exasperated by it than the Irish at home and 
we feel sure that no native American vrill ever venture to use it to an Irish audience. 
There is one other point to which Mr. Fronde's attention ought to be called, as likely 
•eriouely to diminish the political weight of his exposition of the causes of Irish discon- 
tent. The sole justification of a conquest, even of a conquest achieved over barbarians 
by a civilized people, is that it supplies good government — that is protection for life and 
property. Unless it does this, no picture, however dark, of the discords and disorder 
•ad savagery of the conquered can set the conqueror right at the bar of civiliied opin- 
igo. Therefww, tiie shocking and oarefully darkened pictures of the social and political 
u<l(;rs£etks& «t tte native Iriih in the fifteentii, sixteenth, and sevetatcenth centuries 



14 LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHEE BURKE. 

with which Mr. Froude is furnishing us, are avaiiable for English vindication only on 
the supposition that the invasion, even if it destroyed liberty, brought with it law and 
order. But according to Mr. Froude'a eloquent confession, it brought nothing of the 
kind. Queen Elizabeth made the first serious attempt to subjugate Ireland, but she did 
it, Mr. Froude tells us, vrith only a handful of English soldiers — who acted as auxiliarief 
to Irish clans engaged on the Queen's instigation in mutual massacr*. After three 
years of this sort of thing, the whole southern portion of the island was reduced, to 
use Mr. Froude's words, '• to a smoking wilderness," men, woman and children having 
been remorselessly slaughtered : but no attempt whatever was then made to establish 
either courts or police, or auy civil rule of any kind. Society was left in a worse 
coadition than before." 

The final summing up of the Evening Post of New York deserves place here for its 
incisive frankness as well as for the intelligeace which characterizes niost of the articleg 
of that journal. It says November 26th : 

Father Burke has finished his course of five lectures in reply to Mr. Froude. Th» 
discussion .,will be a memorable one. An Englishman of fine mind and thorough 
culture comes to tell us in America, by word of mouth, a new story whch he sees fit to 
convey to his own countrymen through the bookseller's shop. An Irish monk, who 
chances to be in this country on the business of his church, conceives an injustice to 
have been done his countrymen by tlie narrative, and in his priestly robes befakes him- 
self to the lecturer's platform. Ill-prepared as he was for the work, he undertook the 
task, and in the main he has come oflT with credit. The dramatic character "of this 
mental joust culminated last evening. In the first four lectures Father Burke, in 
spite of himself, spoke as the monk. Loving Ireland ardently, it was Catholic Ireland 
that he loved ; hating England bitterly, he hated her for the wrongs she had heaped 
upon his church ; defending the Irish from the criticisms of Mr. Froude, it was the 
Catholic Irishman that he defended. His impassioned words leaped forth with a color 
and tone bred in a cloister, just as his body appeared in the garb of his order. Last 
evening, however, Father Burke played a different .part. He presented the strange 
appearance of a Dominican monk standing up and declaring that he believed every 
people to be able to legislate for themselves. In answer to an Englishman who, if 
report be true, is not in the best of odor with the theologians, and who had virtually 
declared that one nation has a divine right to govern another, if it he stronger, he, th* 
representative of a churchly absolutism, asserted the inherent and irrefragable right of 
every nation, irrespective of its relative strength or its temporary weakness, to admin- 
ister its own aff"airs, in its own way This he did with a wit, a sarcasm, a pathos and an 
energy rarely heard in combination, and with an effect which brought to life once more 
the triumphs of the old orators. Strong men wept, his bursts of indignation were 
applauded to the echo, and yet so perfect was the oratorical art that the judicious coun. 
•el which followed received similar commendation. Haynes's mental fence was not 
more skilful and Webster's most potent logic was not more influential. But while these 
two men stand so far apart on historical questions, they arc practjcally shoulder to 
shoulder on the only vital point in tlie whole controversy, and that is tlie present and 
future of Ireland. Father Burke disappointed his enemies and surprised his friend* 
by his plain ccnnuion sense and sagacious method of handling this delicate part of th« 
theme, and we hope that Irishmen everywhere will give heed to his opinions. After speak 
ing of the act of union with England and its results, he said there were two methods 
proposed for improvieg the condition of Ireland ; one was by means of the sword ; tiM 
other by the development of the natural resources of the island and the building up of a 
united and strong people by toleration, industry, frugality, temperance and obedience to 
law. Thf) first is for Fenianism, with its head-centres and George Francis Trains ; th« 
other is the great principle that nations, like men, must work out their own salvation— 
|h«k it is not the name a nation goes by, but the obaracter of the body oi its p«opi«« 



LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE. 15 

which gives stability to the state aod freedom ol the individual Father Burke was 
positive ia his choice between these two methods , said he : "I do not believe in insur 
rectionary movements in a country fio divided as Ireland." On the contrary, he urged 
upon the Irish the adoption of the opposite view by every consideration of persona 
advantage and national honor. He made a special plea for charity of opinion and unity 
of action among Irismen in Ireland in this effort to buifd up a progressive state. Mr. 
Froude himself did not say a wiser thing than was said by this monk when he declared 
" that union can be effected by largeness of mind ; by generosity and urbanity toward 
your fellow-citizens ; by rising above the miserable bigotry that carries religious differ- 
ences and religious hatreds into relations of life that don't belong to religion." Mr. 
Frond's will do a wise thing if he stops work on his new lectures in reply and drops the 
discussion. 

There is not tme solitary exception, among the great public journals of America, to 
ohis complete and oterwhelming verdict won by Father Burke for his biotherland 
against the power that sought to defame as well^ as destroy her. And thus it befalls 
that, through the favor of God in sending into ourmid^t this humble and unpretending 
Irish priest in the hour of our need, the very agency invoked in the cause of " the 
Saxou and guilt," is turned to the account of VjKTUE and of Erin. 

HIS CRUSADE AGAINST DEUNKENNESS. 

Father Burke soon after his arrival manifested his emphatic approval of the Total 
Abstinence Movement that was organizing in the several states against the vice ot 
drunkenness. On being approached by the President of the Diocesan Union of New 
Jersey", he promptly consented to join Bishop Bay ley in the crusade then going on ia 
that ftate. Bishop Bayley was to speak at the State Conventiou at Paterson. 
Father Burke, said " I will not write you a letter, but will go out in person to 
testify my warm interest in your work, and to say a few words with the eminent 
American prelate for the Cause of Temperance, which is the cause of religion and ol 
Ireland!" This great address followed by others on different occasions raised the 
tone of tlie movement, and gave renewed life and hope to those enlisted in it. 
The alliance and avlvocaey of the famous preacher, who was looked on by hii 
countrymen as a messenger from heaven sent to this land, gave a dignity and prestige 
to the Temperance movement which drew to its srandard thousands, who would not 
have heeded any other call. The lectures, with those of Archbishop Bayley were 
di«tributed in pnmphlet form by hundreds of thousands throughout the country. 
Society comiHittces visited the Catholic homes with them ; altar boys distributed 
them to the congregation ; priests read and enforced them from the altar, and the 
full measure of Father Burke's great harvest of souls will perhaps never be knows 
except to the Miister who sent him to raise his people up. But in every state of thii 
great country — almost in every town — there are scores of families from whose bosom 
the serpent of intemperance wtth its discord, agonies and tears has been banished 
and the angsl of grace, religion and happiness enthroned in its stead by the magical 
power of these temperance appeals. 

. These happy Catholic families, with their homes a little " heaven upon earth " — 
their hearts united in the blessing of God — children growing up in edueation and virtu© 
to do honor to their grey liairs and to the race of which thty are — will join the Catholic 
citixens of America and the Irish race wherever they dwell on the broad earth in 
the invocation that the God of Ireland may long apare and preserve for us our 
Dominican Friar, Father Qurke, in the splendor of his intellect and genius and the 
freghneas, buoyancy and rigor of his physical powers to teach us, defend as and lead 
«• on to brighter destiuim as a jMople and a nation. 



McMASTER ON FATHER BURKE 

The editor of the Freeman's Journal, of New York, in the course oi an 
article on the sixth lecture of Froude — tbfv one given in this book— con- 
trasts the deportment of the disputants, tjnd en passant, pays the follow- 
ing magnificent tribute to our Irish Dominican. It comes, not from an 
Irishman, but from an American gentleman — one of Mr. Fronde's " 2:rand 
jury." The writer says : — 

" Father Burke, we have though:, and we think so now, more thaik 
ever, has come to this country at an opportune moment ; and on a mis- 
sion that he dreamed not of. God has given him the tongue of the learned, 
and the voice that wins men in spite of themselves. His intellect has 
been touched by the live coal that is taken from the Altar, and his soul 
has become gentle and loving from meditation on the Crucified. God 
could, as easily, have raised up some other man, for the work, but He has 
chosen to raise him. He has given him the ear and the attention of vast 
publics. He has given the true rallying cry to the people of his race and 
of his blood. He has told them of the grand record of their fathers, 
and he tries to win all of them to a jealousy of being worthy of those 
fathers. And he shows them that, to be so, they must still bear the 
Cross as their fathers did, «nd obey and practice its holy lessons.* 



K? 



ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

LECTURE BY MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 

In Association Hall, New York, Dec. 1, 1872. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : — If my object in coming to this conntry was 
to draw attention to the Irish question, I may, so far, be said to have suc- 
ceeded. I have succeeded, also, beyond my expectation, in eliciting a 
counter-statement, containing the opinions of the Irish people on their past 
history ; the most complete, the most symmetrical, the most thorough- 
going, which has yet been given to the world. The successive points 
taTren by Father Burke have been long familiar to me, some in one book, 
and some in another. But nowhere have so many of them been combined so 
artistically, and not until now have they been presented in what may be 
called an authoritative form. Father Burke regrets that I should have 
obliged him tore-open wounds which he would have preferred to have left 
closed. I conceive on the other hand that a wound is aever healed so 
long as there is a misunderstanding. England and Ireland can approach 
each other only on the bases of truth, and so long as Irish children are 
fed with the story which Father Burke has so elegantly told, so long they 
must regard England with eyes of utter detestation, until full atonement 
be made for past wrongs. If Father Burke's account is true, let. England 
know if, look at it in the face and acknowledge it. If it be an illusion or 
tissue of illusions, then it is equally desirable that the Irish should know 
it, and a bridge of solid fact be laid across the gulf that divides us. A 
subject of this kind can only be successfully treated from the platform if the 
audience will bear a share of the burden, if they will test by reference 
what they hear, compare evidence and analyze it. You wilt learn more 
from the books to which I shall refer you than you can learn from me in 
the time which I shall take in addressing you. I shall myself venture to 
indicate the particulars where Father Burke's narration specially needs 
examination, and refer you to authorities. That an Irishman's view should be 
different from an Englishman's view is natural and inevitable j but the differ- 
ence must be limited by facts which are easily ascertainable. When they 
are not ascertainable elsewhere, as, for instance, when Father Burke attri- 



m FBOUDE'3 A-NSWER TO FATHER BURKE 

^"afej 'v70rds io me which I never utlercd, I shall venture to speak with 
a-Qiboriity, I must lead off with a poiut of this Irind. The Father says 3 
h&v-e ccrme to America to ask for the extraordinary verdict that England 
has. been right in the maimer in which she treated Ireland for 700. years. 
JOonsidedng that I have drawn a heavier indictment against England in 
/ ho course of my lectures than she will probably thank me for, considering 
S'jat 1 have described the history of her connection with Ireland from the 
SaegTBTiing as a scandal and reproach to her, I must meet this assertion 
Vfith Fi simple denial. No one who knows Ireland now can be satisfied. 
"'With Its present condition. There is an agitation for a separate Irish 
.'Pij.vHamcnt, which it was supposed Ihit public sentiment in America 
j^eiierally approved. I think, for myself, that there are certain definite 
n]Qea.snw.C'fi for Ireland's good which she could obtain more easily from a 
lanifcod Parliament than she could obtain from her own. Father Burke 
,'go^ on to suggest that England is a dacaying Empire, that her power ia 
l)ro)rcnj lier arm grown feeble, the days of Macaulay's New Zealander not 
jifar off, that Jingland is afraid of the growing strength of its Irish in the 
".JMtiDd States, the eight millions of them who have come from the old 
QX&mhy^ and the fourteen millions of Irish descent. It is scarcely be- 
isaiODj'jig for two British subjects to be discussing in this country whetbei 

(Sreat Brifaifi is in a state of decadence. 

« 

..England is afraid, however, and deeply afraid. She is afraid of even 
hf^ng driven to lise again those measures of coercion against Irela'jd 
whicb i)ave l>ec» the slrame of her hl.story. But Father Burke's figurns, I 
<yinfess, startled me. Of the 42,000,000 of American citizens, 22,000,080 
^•were Jri.sli l)r)rn or sprung from Irish parents. Was this possible.' I 
jja'fe.JTcd io t!io census of 1870, and T was still more confounded The 
ea&e uinil'cr of emigrant foreigners who \fere then in the United States 
rjTDwmlcd io 5,556,556. Of these under 2,000,000 were Irish. The 
tafttiiiD number of children born of Iri.'^h parents was under 2,000,000 also. 
i^mw these figures it follows, if Father Bmke is correct, that in th^so two 
iilafifc >,cai.s there must have come from Ireland, no less than G,000,0o0 
ij-'CT-s/^ifi, cr more than the entire popnlitiou of the island, and that in the 
•■ani<*. I. w.) years the Irish mothers must have produced not fewer than 

•-'iODO 000 infants. I knew that their fertility was remarkable, but I 
'■^yas not, jirepared for such an astounding illusi ration of it. Still specu- 
SaJing on my motives. Father Burke inclines, on the whole, to giyc me 
"CxedJt, for patriotism.* He thinks I have come to si)eak for my own 
cooniry, and he is godHenough to praise m;> for doing so. I am grateful 
^or 1)jo coinjiliinent, but I cannot except it. I have come not to speak 
■■3for iniy country but for his. I believe that the present agitation there is 
Jd.ilroly to avert indcGnitely the progress of improvement ; that the best 
•vibaace for (he Iri.sh jxoplo is to staud by the Engli.sh people and demand 
-AM alteriition of-4bo land laws. I wish to see them turn IhcirV-nergiea 
(^zoTD the speonlativo to the praetical. But Father Burke considers me 



FSOUDE'8 ANSWER TO FATHER BVRKM. If 

S2t to speak upon the-^e sabjeots, and for three reasons : First, becaas^ 
I despise ihe Iri.'sh people. I despise then), do 1 1 Then why have I Haadbi 
Ireland my secoud home ? Why am I here now ? Am I finding ray uudtr-. 
taking such a pleasant one? I say that, for various reasons, I havct a 
peculiar and exceptional respect for the Irith people, I utean for ip.& 
worthy part of them, the peasantry, and, to my lights, I am ecdoavonQg: 
to serve them. I say the peasantry ; for Irisli demagogues a!)il political 
agitators — well, for them, yet^, I confess, I do Cetl contempt from tho vej-y 
bottom of my sonl. I rejoiee that Father Burke has disclaimed all con- 
nection with them Of all the curses ihat have atiKcted Ireland, ihe 
dem.igoi,aie-^ liave been the f.reatest. Bat I am unfit for another reason 
1 have been convicied by a citizen of Brooklyn oi" inserting words of my 
own in letters and documents of State. -Ladies and genticrncn, I havo 
not been convicted by the citizen of Brooklyn, but I have given the 
citizen bf Brooklyn an opportunity of correcting me if I am guilty. Hes 
has not been pleased to avail himself of it. He calls my proposal I know 
not why, fallacious. He inquires why I will not reply directly to his ow» 
allegations. I answer, first, that I cannot, for I am at cne side of tbfe 
Atlantic and my books and papers are at the other. I answer secondly,, 
that if I reply to him, I must reply to fifty others. I answer thli'dly, that 
I have found by experience that controversies between parties interested 
in such disputes, lead to no conclusion. At this moment I am supposecl 
to be calumniating the Irish Catholics. Two er three years ago I was m 
trouble in England on precisely opposite ground. I had discovered a, 
document which I conceived to relieve the Catholic hierarchy of IrelancI 
of the charge of subserviency to Queen Elizabeth, which had long at, 
tached to them. I had discovered another from which 'published extracts 
exposing an act of extreme cruelty perpetrated in the Korth of Ireland by 
one of Elizabeth's officers. But these papers I had reason to know wero 
extremely wclcomo to tho Irish Catholic prelates. They were no lesa 
unwelcome to Protestants. I was violently attacked, and I replied. The 
documents were looked into, up and down, but without producing ^con- 
viction on either side. I, after tho most careful consgderation, was unable 
to withdraw Vv'hat I had written. The Tory journals continued, and 
pei'haps continue to charge me v/ith misrepresentation, and. speakof me as 
a person whose good faith is not to be depended on. 

I determined that from that time I would never place myself in such 
a position again. 

" 'Tis dangerous when tlio baser nature fittls 
Betwei-n the pass, and tell incensed pouits 
Of mighty oiiposites." 

I hope I am 'not, strictly speaking, the baser nature. But it has been mj 
fortune ever since I began to' write on these subjects to feel the pricks of 
the opposing lances, and I shall continue to feel them a.s long as I tell 
the truth. My " History of England" has been cotnposed from perhaps 
100.000 documents, nme-tenths of them in different MSS , and in. half i^ 



20 FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

dozen languages. I have been unable to trust printed copies, for the 
MSS. often tell stories which the printed versions leave concealed. I 
have been unable to. trust, copyists ,- I have read everything myself. I 
have made my own extracts from papers, which I might never see a sec- 
ond time. ■ I have had 1o condense pages into single sentence-s, to trans- 
ate, to analyze, and have bad afterward to depend entirely on my own 
transcrip's. Under such conditions it is impossible for me to answer that 
no reference has been misplaced, and no inverted comma fallen to the 
•wrong words. I have done my best tobe exact, and no writer can un- 
dertake more. Once more. Father Burke says I am unfit to .«peak of Ire- 
land, bscauss I hate the Catholic Church. I show my hatred, it appears, 
by holding that church answerable for cruelties of the Duke of Alva in 
the NetherlandSj and for the massacres of St. Bartholomew's Day in 
Prance. Here is what the Father says on the first of these matters: 
*' Alva fought in the Netherlands against an uprising against the authority 
of the State. If the rebels happened to be Protestants there is no reason 
to father llieir blood upon the Catholics." I beg you 1o atteiid to this 
passage. This is the way in which modern Catholic history is composed, 
and you may see from it what kind of lessons children ^vill be taught in 
the national schools, if Catholics have the control of the the text books. 
Father Burke himself, perhaps, only repeats what he himself learned. I 
suppose he never beard of the Edicts of Charles the Fifth. By these 
Edicts, which were issued at the opening of the l.eformation, every man 
•convicted of holding heretical opinions was to lose his bead. If he was 
obstinate, and refused to lecant, he was to be burned. Woniea were to be 
hurncd alive. Those who concealed heretics were liable to the same pen- 
alties as thQ heretics themselves. The execution of the Edicts was com 
mitted to the Episcopal Inquisition, and under them, in that one reign, 
the Prince of Orange, who was alive at the timo, and the great Groiius, 
>S'hoso name alone is a guarantee against a suspicion of exajjgeration, de- 
clare that no less than 50,000 persons were put to deaih in cold blood. I 
ha>-o myself expressed a doubt wheither these numbers could have been 
really so large, but i. better judge than I am, a man totally untroubled 
■with the theological profession, the historian Gibbon, considers the largest 
estimate to be nearest to the truth. I don't ask you to believe me. ladies 
and gentlemen — read Grotlus; read the Prince of Orange's apology ; read 
the pages of your own Mr. Motley. Father Burke, in like manner, de- 
clares that the church was blameless for the destruction of the French 
Protestants. The Te Deuras that were sung at Rome, when the news 
came, he says, were for the safety of the King and not ibrihe massacre of 
the Huguenots. Indeed ! Then why did the Infallible Pope issue a me- 
tal, on which was stamped Hugonotorum strages— Slaughter of (he 
Huguenots? Why was the design on the reverse of the medal, an angel 
%ith a sword smiting the Hydra of heresy ? Does Father Burke know t 
I sappose not — that the murders in Paris were but the beginnhig of t 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 21 

scene of havoc, which overspread France, and lasted for nearly two 
montlis. Eighteen or nineteen thousand persons were killed in Paris on 
the 24tb of August. By the end of September the list \Yas swollen to 
70,000 Strangely incautious^ infallible Pope, if he was only grateful for 
the safety of Charles the Ninth. For what must have been the effect of 
the news of the Pope's approval on the zeal of the orthodox executioners? 
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not hate the Catholic religion. Some of 
the best and holiest men I ever heard or have lived and died in the 
Catholic f:iith. But I do hate the spirit which the church displayed intho 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and I hate the spirit which would 
throw a veil of sophistry over those atrocities in the nineteenth. The 
history of the illustrious men. who fought and bled in that long, desperate 
battle for liberty of conscience, the very liberty to which the Catholics 
now appeal is a sacred treasure, left in charge to all succeeding genera- 
tions. Father Burke is himself for toleration — the freest and the widest. 
I am heartily glad of it. I wish I could feel that he was speaking for hia 
Church as well as himself. But my mind misgives me when I read the 
Syllabus. In the same nutober of the New York TaUet from which I 
tabe this speech I find an article condemning the admission of Jews to 
the rights of citizens. Now it irf very hard to be tolerant on Father 
Burke's terms. In his reading of history, the Protestants were the chief 
criminals. The Catholics were innocent victims. If on those terms he is 
filling to forgive and forget, I, for one, am not. Father Burke knows 
the connection between confession and absolution. The first is the con- 
dition of the second. When the Catholic Church admits frankly her 
past faults, the world will as frankly forgive them. If she takes refuge 
in evasion ; if she persists in throwing the blame on others who were 
guilty of nothing except resistance to her tyranny, the innocent blood that 
she shed remains upon her hands, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not 
sweeten them. I will assure them that I am fit to speak on this Irish sub- 
ject and I will at once pass it. I said that Ireland was in a state of anarchy 
before the Norman conquest. In other countries, I have said, there were 
wars, but order was out of them. In Ireland I said no such tendency 
was visible. Father Burke answers that the Banes had caused them 
trouble ; that the Irish had at last driven thp Danes out and were set- 
tling down to peace and good government. He alluded to the Wars of 
the Roses, which he says left England utterly demoi-alized for half a cen- 
tury. Is he serious ? Is he speaking of the England which Erasmus 
came to visit — which the Courts of Spain and France courted ptersisteutly 
as the arbiter of Europe, as the country which could adopt' for its motto 
" Cui adheres Proeest."^ I hold in my hand the balance of European 
community. Archbishop Amslem it seems wrote to congratulate a King 
of Munster en the quiet of the country. I beg any of you to turn over 
the leaves of the " Annals of the Four Masters," the most authoritative 
record of Irish history. I read in my lectures the entry of t'ne year 17 '^0, 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

fourteen years before the Conquest, when, according to the Father, all 
things were going so well. In that one year three kings were killed, be- 
sides an infuriate slaughter of other people. Look for yourselves, see 
whether that year was exceptionally bad. If there were a few months 
breathing time in such a state of things, an archbishop might well write 
I'o congratulate. Geraldus, the Welshman, who came in soon after to see 
,vhat Ireland was like, confirms substantially the account of the annals. 
Father Burke calls him freely a liar, though he quotes him approvingly ^ 
when he speaks of the Irish virtues. If Geraldus is to be believed when 
he says the Irish were loyal to theh chief, I do not know why he is not to 
be believed when he 'says they were fierce, licentious, treacherous, false, 
and cruel. Geraldus tells some absurd stories. 

The Irish books of the age are full of still more absurd stories. In the 
twelfth centui-y there were extant sixty-six lives of St. Patrick. Mr. 
Gibbon says of them that they must have contained as many thou- 
sand lies. That is a large estimate of those which survived the earliest^ 
which is very beautiful, contains few lies, or perhaps none. The latest, 
that by Jocelyn of Ferns, which has been adopted by the Ijollendists, 
contains probably more than a thousand lies. It is one of the most ridi- 
culous books I ever looked into. By the way Jocelyn writes, Geraldus 
is a rationalist. I wish you would read Geraldus's account of Ireland. 
It is translated : it is short, and carries about it, in my opinion, a stamp 
of concerted veracity. I go to the Norman Conquest itself, and Pope 
Adrian's Bull, which Father Burke still declares to be a forgery. I need 
here hardly say that I attach no consequence to the bull itself. I sup- 
pose the popes of Rome ha've no more right over Ireland than I have over 
Cuba. The popes, however, at that lime represent the general consci- 
ence. What a Pope sanctioned was usually what the intelligent part of 
mankind held to bo right. If the Norman forged such a sanc'.ion to color 
their conquest, they committed a crime which ought to be exposed. The 
naked facts are these : King Henry when he conquered Ireland, produced 
as his authority a Bull said to have been granted twenty years before by 
Pope Adrian. It is a matter of history that from the date of the con- 
quest Peter's pence was paid regularly to Rome by Ireland. Ecclesias- 
tical suits were ref<-rred to Rome. Continual application was madfe 
to Rome for dispensations to marry within the forbidden degrees. Thtre 
was. close and constant communication from that time forward between 
the Irish people and clergy and the Roman Court. Is it conceivable ' 
that in the course of all this communication, the Irish should never have 
mentioned this forged bull at Romc„or that they did mention it, there 
should have been no inquiry and exposure. To me such a suppo^ilion is 
' utterly inconceivable, but the Bull, says Father* Pnirko, is a forgery on 
] the face of it. The date upon it is 1154. Adrian was elected 
1 Pope on the '3d of December, 1154. John, of Salisbury, by whom 
t the Bull was procured, did not arrive in Kome to ask for it until 



FEOUDK'S ANSWFR TO FATHER BUEKE. 23 

1155. "What clearer proof could Ihcrc be" Very plausible. But forgers 
would scarcely liave cominitted a blander so siTuple. Father Burke's 
crit'cism coroos from handling tools Ije is imperfectly acquainted witb. 
He is evidently ignorant that the English official year began on the 25th 
of March. A paper dated February, 1154, was in reality written Feb- 
uary, 1155. The Pope did not use this style, but Englishmen did, and a 
confusion of this kind is the most natural thing in the world in the publi- 
cation of a document by which England was specially affected. But we 
are only at the beginning of the difficulty in which we are now led by the 
hypothesis of forgery. 

I advise Father Burke to look at aletter from a subsequent Pope to King 
Henry the Third, published by Dr. Theiner from the Vatican archives. I 
have not Dr. Theiner's book by mo to refer to. 1 must, therefore, describe 
the letter from memory, but 1 have no doubt that 1 remember it sabstan- 
tially. The Irish had represented at iiome that the Normans had treated 
them with harshness and cruelty. They had appealed to the Pope. They 
had been brought under the Norman yoke, they- said, by an act of his pre- 
decessor, and they begged him to interfere. What does the Pope answer? 
Does he say that he has looked into the archives and can find no record of 
any sort out of his predecessor, that it was a mistake or a fraud 1 He does 
nothing of the the kind. He writes to the King of England, laying the 
complaints of the Irish before him. He reminds him gently of the tenor u£ 
the commissiou by which Adrian had sanctioned the conquest and begs 
hiin to restrain the violence of his Norman subjects. Once more we have 
aletter from Donald O'Neill, calling himself King of Ulster, to the Pope, 
speaking of the Normans much as Father Burke speaks of theEnglishmen^ 
complaining specially of Pope Adrian for having, as an Euglishmany. , 
sacrificed Ireland to his countrymen. The idea that the grant waa fictitious 
had never occurred to him. As little was the faintest suspicion entertained 
at Borne. The Pope and the victims who had been sacrificed were equally 
the dupes of Norman cunning and audacity. Wonderful Normans!' 
Wonderful infallible Popes ! I must hurry on. 1 have no occasion to de- 
fend the Norman rule in Ireland. It was an attempt to plant the feudal 
gystem on a soil Avhich did not agree with it, and the feudal system failed 
as completely as did all other institutions which have been attempted, to 
naturalize there. There is, however, one stereotyped illustration of Nor- 
man tryar/ny, on which patriot orators are never weary of dilaXing, that I 
must for a moment paiise to notice ; of course Father Burke could not miss 
it. So a^'.rOcious were the Norman laws he tells us, that the Irish were 
denied the privileges of human beings. It was declaced not to be felony 
to kill them. So stands the law ; not to be denied or got over ; yet there 
is soujcthing more to be said on that subject. I am not surprised that it 
did not occur to Father Burke that after all it was not the inhuman 
barbavk'm which it appears to be at the first blush. 
As the NormansfouQii they could not CGcqaer the entire iskad, tbeoounti^ 



24 FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

around Dublin, the sea-ports and municipal towns, with -the adjoining dis- 
trict, cams to be known as the English Palo ; within the Pale they estab- 
lished the English common laws ; outside the Pale in the chief territoriea 
there remained the Breton or Irish law. Now, felony was a word of 
English law entirely. Under English law homioi:<e was felony and was 
punished by death. Under the Breton law homicide was not felony ; it 
•was an injury for which compensation was to be made by the family of 
the slayer. Every Irishman living inside the Pale was as much protected 
by the law as any one else. To kill him was as much felony as to kill an 
Englishman. But English law could not protect those who refused to 
live under it. Questions often rose what was to be done when a life was 
lost in a border scuffle or a quarrel, and the Norman Parliament declined 
to attach more importance to the life of an outside Irishman than his own 
attached to it. Father Burke quotes a case triumphantly of an English- 
man who had killed an Irishman, pleading the statute, but offering in 
couFt to make compensation according to Proton custom, and being in 
consequence acquitted. This exactly illustrates what I have been saying. 
I admit, however, and I insisted in my own lectures, that the Norman 
failures had been complete, that the result of the contest was to leave the 
cotsutry after three hundred years' experience worse than before.' I pass 
to the modern period. Father Burke opens with an eloquent der/jnciation 
of Henry VIII., and as I have a great deal to say on points ot more con- 
sequence, I leave Henry to his mercies. I will only pause out of cuvio- 
,sity to ask for more information about three Carthusian Abbots, whom a 
jury refused to iind guilty under the Supremacy act, till Henry threatened, 
if they did not comply to prosecute them for treason. I thought I knew 
the history of all the treason trials of that reign. I know of sevei-al abbots 
being tried and executed. I remember the story of the priors and mem- 
bers of the Charter-house, and astonishingly beautiful it is. But I cannot 
fit on Father Burke's story to any of them. If, as I suppose, ho means 
the priors and monks of the Charter-house, the lecords of the trial prove 
conclusively that the story about th^^ jury. cannot be true. As to Ireland 
at. this period, I cannot make out Father Burko's position. He possesses 
odd little pieces of real knowledge sot in a framework — since I cannot 
accuse him of misrepresentation — set in a framework of such singular 
acquaintance witli the general complexion of the times that 1 have specu- 
lated much how he came by this knowledge. Ho quotes from the State 
papers. J-«et mo tell you.generally what these State papers are. When 
there were no newspapers, ministers depended for their information upon 
their correspondents, and you find in these collections letters and reports 
of all kinds from all sorts of people, conveying the same kind of informa- 
tion which you would gather out of a newspaper to-day — with the same 
conflict of opinions. Those relating to Ireland during the reign of Heurj f 
VII. have been printed, and filled two large thiik quarto volumes of 80( * 
or 900 nagea each. 



rilOUDE'S ANSWEIi TO FAllIEll BURKE. 

There are also' four volumes of calendars or al)siracts of the later reign 
of Elizabeth liDOwn by ihc name of the Carew colleeiion of MSS., with 
long and most intarestiag extracts. I fancy if you -will read these vol- 
umes, and will read at the same time the '^ Eaview of the State of Ireland" 
by the poet Speneer, Baron Einglas's " B^-eviate of Ireland," and. Sir 
Henry Sidney's '^Correspondence/' you -will not require either me or 
Father Burlieto tell you what was the real conditiou of the country we 
are both talkiug about. Meanwhile, I must say a word or two. Father 
Burke talks with great vehemence about spoliation of lands and the ex- 
pubion of Irishmen from the homes of their fathers. There is a document , 
the opeciDg document of the "King Henry Series" — which he does not 
seem to have studied, but which I wish he would study, for ir. gives a 
complete key to the real difficulties of Ireland and to all thepolicj of the 
succeeding reigns. This document is dated 1515, and is called a '■' Report 
on the State of Ireland, with a Plan for its Eaformation," Father Burke 
admits that there was disorder at this time, but he says it was caused by 
the Normans. Now, this report explains that the real cause was that the 
real Normans had ceased to become Normans, and had become Irish. 
They spoke Irish, dressed like Irish, adopted Irish habits, and laws and 
customs. Father Burke cannoi be ignorant that to the Geraldinos in 
Monster and Leinster, to the Butlers in Kilkenny, to his own ancestors, 
the De Burghs or Burkes in the west, the Irish clans looked upon with a 
feeling of loyal allegiance. As far as there was any order at all in the 
country, it was in the homage paid by the native race — paid to these four 
families. They, and the smaller Norman barons who held under them, 
are spoken of in the State papers as English in contrast to Ireland. They 
were as much English as you Americans are English, or any G-rattan and 
Wolf Tone were English ; yet Father Burke thinks that be made a point 
when he quotes a passage saying that some of these , people were more 
troublesome than the Irish. Of course they were. Did he ever hear the 
old phrase, ^' Ipsis Hiberais,Hibernioria" — more Irish than the Irish them- 
selves." 

I want you to understand the social state of the country as this report 
describes it. There were at this time sixty great Irish chiefs, and thirty 
great Norman chiefs, each ruling ^y his own sword, and all Wir'mg in the 
same manner. They kept 60,000 men underarms to do nothing but to 
fight. The chiefs of this army of vagabonds were maintained by an Irish 
custom called Coque slavery. Father Burke boasts that there was no 
slavery in Ireland; there was worse than that, for the wretched peasantry 
were obliged to supply this army with food, lodging, and clothing. Now^ 
It was this fighting contingent that was the cause of all the trouble, for 
While they were allowed to plunder the people, industry was impossibles- 
peace was equally impossible, while there were so many men kept fof 
war. The policy of the British Government during the sixteenth century 
was to brjak down this system and to protect the peasant who oultiT«^■4 



16 FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BUEKE« 

the sod, and by stopping their enforced supplies, compel this fighting 
banditti to take to some other employfnert. Here lies the explanation of 
Father Burke's mistake. When he talks of confiscation, it was confisca- 
tion simply of ihe rights of robbers to plunder the poor. All sorts of 
plans were tried ; sometimes an English army was sent to conquer them, 
and sometimes the peasantry were armed to protect themselves. Some- 
limes to plant English and Scotch colonies Sometimes to send the 
entire race over the Shannon to Connaught, where in closer quarters they 
would be unable to find tliB means of supporting the fighting battalions. 
Look at the report and see if this was not the condition of the country, 
and how it was reduced. Father Burke says nothing about this, yet any 
one, if he will look into the State papers, and refer to the head " Coyne 
and Leoing " will see these facts. 

The Pieformation of course complicated matters worse, but the 
social problem was then the cause, as it is now. When I spoke of 
King Henry's appointment of the Earl of Kildare to the'%-ice royalty 
as an experiment of Home Rule, Father Bui'ke asks me why Henry 
did not call a Parhament of the Irish chiefs. This, I admit, would 
have been a v/orse form of Home Rule. The present grievances 
would have had even less chance of a hearing then, than they would 
have from a separate Irish Parliament if it were called to-day. Now, 
Fathtr Burke sa,ys that the Earl of Kildare was an Englishman. He 
was as much an Englishman as Lord Edward Fitzgerald, his descen- 
dant, a ad Dr. McNevin ; that is to say, he was the most Ii-ish noble- 
man. i''\ther Bui'ke says the insurrection was an English insui'rec- 
tion. It -^vs Enghsh in the sense that the association of the United 
Irishmen wore English, neither less nor more. I suppose that his 
words were kv more than a rhetorical floiuish to gain an immediate 
point. If not., and if he really indicates the piresent views of the Cel- 
tic race in the.' v history and misfortimes, it is a new and significant 
feature in the p\"s>gress of the question. Till this time, the Geral- 
dines have been I'oo idols of the national tradition. O'Conuell used 
to say that the DiJLo of Leinster, Kildare's representative, was the 
iiatural King of L'eh^l^d. Lord Thomas has been one of the most 
poprdar Irish heroes. If all this is to be thi'own aside, I will only say 
that it is a bad return for the bl(jod which the Geraldines and the 
Barons of the Pale lost in the cause of Ii-eland and the CathoHc Chiurh. 
For the honor of li'ish patriotism, I trust that Father Bm-ke is not in 
this case a representative of the feehngs of his people. 

Father Burke says this rebellion desolated the ^holo of Mimster, 
and a great part of Leinster. Now, it hardly touched Munster at all, 
and it affected severely only the half of Leinster. The chief sufterers 
■wero those who were loyal to the Enghsh rule. But Father Burke 
does not distinguish between the rribellion of the Kildares, uadei* 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 27 

Henry VHT, and the rebellion of the Desmonds, under Elizabeth, and 
he lumps them both together. 

I said in my lectures that the private lives of some of the Catholic 
bishops before the Reformation were not perfectly regular. Father 
Burke says I made a wild and unsupported assertion. I was thinking 
of Archbishop Bodkin, of Turin. Another instance may be found in 
Dr. Theiner, whose writings I .wish he would read. It comes from 
Rome— the fountain of infallibility. Father Burke does not deny that 
the greatest Irish chiefs accepted peerages from King Heniy Vm, 
took the oath of supremacy to him, and called him " King of Ireland." 
It is true the Cathohc people of Ii'eland did rise against their chiefs 
and deposed them. Con O'Neill, the descendant of the Irish Kings, 
was made by Henry, Earl of Tyrone. This O'Neill, Father Burke says, 
was taken by his son and clapped into jail, where he died. A very- 
pious son, and moved entirely, no doubt, by his zeal for the holy 
church. This son was the celebrated Shane, a bastard son of Con, but 
a "broth of a boy," and the darling of the tribe. Shane respected his 
father, for in one of his letters lie says his father acted like a gentle- 
man and never denied any of his children. But in order to get the 
inheritance, Shane shut his father up till he died. The legitimate 
brother was made way with and Shane became an O'Neill, but not, I 
think, as Father Burke says, on account of zeal for the holy church. 

Father Bui'ke says that the first law which the Cathohc Ii'ish Par- 
liament passed, was an act enacting that no man should be prosecuted 
on account of his rehgion. And he asked : " "Was not this magnani- 
moas?" But he omits to say that it was accompanied by two other 
acts which deprived almost every Protestant in Ireland of every acre 
of land he possessed. The Irish Parliament threw out a bait to the 
Presbyterian farmers and artisans who had been persecuted by the 
bishojjs of the estabhshment, but as they held no land the confiscation 
acts did not touch them, but they closed the gates of Derry in Tyrcon- 
nell's teeth. 

Father Burke thinks he answers me when he points to the Act of 
Uniformity passed •in Ireland in the second year of Elizabeth's reign. 
I regret the act, but the whole country was in a state of anarchy, and 
it was not executed. Elizabeth v.^as determined that the act should not 
be enforced. I knovf this, for I have studied her correspondence with 
her viceroys, one of them. Lord Grey, being a strong Puritan, pressed 
to be allowed to make what he called a Mohammedan conquest. — to 
offer the people the Reformation or the sword„ Her answer was 
that she forbade him to do it — forbade him to meddle with any one for 
his religion, who was not in rebellion against the crown. Elizabeth 
meant well to Ireland. 

Father Burke says that James L promised that the Irish should 



28 FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

be left in possession of their land, that he kept his promise for four 
years, and then broke it. The Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone fled 
from Ireland to escape imprisonment; James then took the whole 
province of Ulster from the original proprietors, and handed it over to 
settlers from England and Scotland. Promises, I suppose, are condi- 
tional on good behavior. Many an oath had TjTone sworn to be a 
loyal subject, and many an oath had 'he broken. . Was he to be al- 
lowed to conspire for ever and remain unpunished ? He fled to avoid 
imprisonment for planning another rebellion. The English took the 
whpie province of Ulster from the Irish, says Father Burke, and there 
/Stops. He ahould have gone on to say, but he does not say it, that of 
ihe two miUion of acres of which the six confiscated counties consisted, 
A million and a half were given back to the Irish, and half a million 
only of the acres most fit for cultivation, but Vv^hich the Irish left un- 
cultivated, were retained for the colonists. It has been half a million 
acres for the last two centuries. The acres multiply like Falstaffs men 
in buckram, as the myth develops. " They brought over Scotch and 
.English Protestants," ^ays Father Burke, " and made them swear that 
tliey would not employ a single Irishman or CathoHc." Has not Father 
iBurke omitted one small but important expression ? Was it true that 
[hey were not to employ one single Irishman, or any Irishman that re- 
fused to take the oath of allegiance ? I know that the oath of alle- 
giance was the general condition. Let me remind Father Burke of an 
act of Parhament passed at this very time, by the very men vrhom he 
accuses of this bitter enmity to the Irish. It repeals, forever, every 
law which had made a distinction between the English and Ii'ish in- 
habitants of the coimtry. It declares them all free citizens of a com- 
mon Empne, enjoying equal laws and protection. It expresses a hope 
that thencefoi'vvard they would groAv into one nation in perfect agree- 
ment with utter oblivion of its former differences. * 

As a matter of fact, it can be proved that from the date of this settle- 
ment the English and Irish did live together on these half-million acres, 
and cultivated their land together. Theii' houses and fields lay side by 
Bide, they helped each other, employed each other, ancl grew into useful, 
social, and kindly relations with one another. It was this close 
intimacy, tliis seeming friendship, this adoption by so many of the Irish 
of the laws and customs of the settlers, which constituted the most 
painful features in the rebellion of 1G41. This is the gi-avest matter 
with which I have had to deal. It is the hinge on which later history 
revolves. If Father Burke's version of it is tnie, then the English 
robbed the Irish of their lands, tried to rob them of their religion, 
massacred thorn when they resisted, slandered them as guilty of a crime 
which was in reality our own, and took away from them, as a punish- 
ment, aU ^^0 Jands and Hberties which they retained. If it is true, the 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER B¥RKE. 29 

English owe them reparation. If it is not true, then this cause of heart- 
burning ought to taken away. I cannot regret, with Father Burke, that 
the wound has heeti' re-oflenecl ; rather let it be probed to the bott«m. 
Let the last drop of secreted falsehood be detected and purged out of 
histor5^ Father Burke has studied my lectures imaginatively, and has 
unintentionally misunderstood me. He charges- me with defending the 
Irish administration of the^arl of Strafford, as having come to America 
to ask a free people to indorse Strafford's despotism. Unless words be 
taken to conceal thoughts, -I said that Strafford's policy in Ireland was 
i tj'Tannous, cruel, and dangerous. He speaks as if the Puritan party in 

»<^ England and Scotland were bent on destroying the Catholics in Ireland. 
The commission -which went from the Irish Parliament to London to 
complain of Strafford was composed jointly of Protestants and Catho- 
lics. The arraignment of Strafford was conducted by the great Puritan 
statesman, Pym, and I pointed out in my lectures that his adminis- 
tration in Ireland formed one of the most serious counts on which h^ 
was condemned. Does this look as if the complaints of Ireland could 
receive no attention from the Long Parliament ? Does this bear out * 
Father Burke in charging me with defending Strafford and calling his 
conduct just? Again Father Burke accuses me of having, said that the 
rebellion began with massacre, as if it were a preconceived intention. 
In the stmimary of the events of the ten years I said generally that it 
commenced with massacre ; and so it did, when the period is reviewed 
as a wQole. But in my account of what actually passed I said expressly 
that so far as I could make out from the contradictory evidence, I 
thought that the Ldsh had not intended that there should be bloodshed 

* ataU. 

Lastly, he accuses me of having called the Irish cowards, and he 
desires me to take it -back. I cannot take back what I never gave. 
Father Burke says that such words cause bad blood, and I may one day 
have cause to remember them. That they cause bad blood I have reason 
to know already ; but the words are not mine, but his, and he and not I 
must recall them. Not once, but again and again I have spok(3n of 
the notorious and splendid courage of Irishmen. What I said was this, 
and I will say it over again : I was asking how it was that a race whose 
courage was above suspicion made so poor a hand of rebellion, and I 
answered my question thus, that the Irish would fight only fc^r a cause 
in which they readily behoved, and that they were too shrewd to be 
duped by illusions with which they allowed themselves to play. I will 
add that if five hundred of the present Irish police, Celts and Catholics, 
aU or most of them enHsted in the cause of order and good government, 
would walk up to and v/alk through the large mob which the so-called 
patriots could collect from . the four provinces of Ireland ; if it be to 
call men cowards when I say that under the severest trials the Irish 



80 FROUPE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BCJRKE. 

display tlie noblest qualities wliicli do honor to humanity T7hen they 
are on the right side, then, and only then, have I questioned the cour- 
age of Irishmen. • 

So mnch for myself ; now for the facts of the rebellion. We are 
agreed that on the 23d of October, 1641, there was a universal rising 
of the Irish race and an attempt te expel the Protestant colonists from 
the countiy. Father Burke says the Puritak Lord Justices in DubMn 
knew the rising was imniinent, and dehberately allowed it to break out. 
I must meet him at once with a distinct denial of this. The secret cor- 
respondence of Ihe Lord Justices, before and after the outbreak, has 
been happily preserved, and anything more unlike the state of their 
minds than the idea which Father Burke assigns to them cannot be 
imagined. They had no troops they could* rely upon. The country 
was patrolled by fragments of the Catholic army, which had been 
raised by Strafford, and afterward disbanded, and the Lords Justices 
"were in the utmost terror of them. Situated as they were, they would 
have been simply mad had they seen what was to happen, and purpcse- 
ly permitted it. The Irish, Father Burke says, had good reason to 
rise. Who denies it? Certainly not I. Father Burke says the first 
blood was shed by the Protestants. I should not be surprised if it 
■was so. Men assailed by mobs, who turned them naked out of their 
houses, are apt at times to resist. But this is not what Father Bui-ke 
means. The origin of all the after horrors, he says, was an atrocity 
committed by the Protestant garrison at Carrickfergus, who, before any 
lives had been taken by the Cathohcs, salhed out and destroyed three 
thousand Catholic Irish, who had crowded, together in a place called 
Island Maghee. This story has been examined into, .and bears exam- 
ination as ill as other parts of the popular version of the massacre, but 
apparently to no purjDose. Father Burke, following the usual Irish 
tradition, insists on a commission issued in December, bj the Dublia 
Council, to inquire into the losses of the Scotch and Engush settlers by 
plunder. Because it says nothing of massacres^ he infers that it denies 
that there had been any massacre. Unfortunately for this theory, 
there is a letter, dated the 1st of December, from the same council to 
the Long Parhament, declaring that at the time when they were writ- 
ing, there were forty thousand rebels iu the field, who were putting to 
the sword men, women and childi-eii' that were Protedtants, ill using 
the women and dashing out the brains of the children before their pa- 
rents' faces. I avoided before and shall avoid now all details of this 
dreadful subject. If a tenth part of the sworn evidence be true, thft 
Irish acted more like fiends than human beings. Do yon suppose, 
ladies and gentleman, that the friends and countr}Tnen of these poor 
vromen would have been in a very amiable humor with such scenes be- 
fore them ? Do you suppose that, when they knew that other Enguah 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 81 

families mthin reach of the city were exposed k) the same treatment, 
they ought to have sat still and allowed the Irish to repeat in Leinster 
the atrocities they had perpetrated in the North. Coote collected a 
body of horse out of the fugitive men who had crowded into Dublin. 
The Irish were beginning the same work in an adjoining county. Coote 
rode into the Wicldow Hills, and gave them a lesson that two parties 
could play at murder. I do not excuse him. But the question of ques- 
tions is, Who began all these horrors ? And what was the true extent 
of them ? Father Burke thinks everything short of murder which the 
Irish did to have been perfectly justifiable. He says a Protestant has' 
proved that the Cathohcs killed only 2,100 people, and therefore it must 
be so. Again, a compliment to a Protestant ; but it is a matter on 
"which I will not accept the mere opinion of any one man, even if he do 
call himself Protestant. I am sorry to say I have know many Protest- 
ants entirely unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. Sir WilHam 
Petty, a very able, hot-headed, skeptical sort of a man, examined all 
the evidence over himself, within ten years of the events, went to the 
scene of the massacre, and concluded, after careful consideration, that 
the number of Protestants killed in the first six months of the rebel- 
lion amounted to 38,000. Clarendon and Coote give nearly the same 
numbers. You who would form »j^ independent opinion on the matter I 
advise to read — ^whatever else you read — Sir John Temple's history of 
the rebelhon, and Borlace's history of it. Temple was, as I said, an 
eye-witness. I shall still be met with the "thundering English lie" 
argument, and so far you have but my assertion against Father Burke's. 
In my opinion he treats the Irish massacre precisely as he treats the 
Alva massacre, and the Saint Bartholomew massacre. The woLf lays 
the blame on the lamb. But that you may fairly say, is only my 
view of the question ; very well, I have a pro'posal to make, 
which I hope you will endorse, and if we work together, and if Father 
Burke will help, we may arrive at the truth yet. Ireland and England 
will never understand each other till this story is cleared up. Now, I 
am fond of referring disputed questions to indifferent tribunals. An 
enormous body of evidence Hes stiU half examined in Dublin. I 
should like a competent commission to be appointed to look over the 
whole matter, and report a conclusion. It should consist of men whose 
business is to deal with evidence — ^that is, of lawyers. I would have 
no clergy, Cathohc or Protestant. Clergymen are generally blind of 
one eye. I would not have men of letters or historians like myself and 
Father Burke. We partake of the clergymen's infirmities of di»: 
position. By-the-by, I must beg Father Burke's pardon. He is the 
"rale thing,"as we say in Ireland; but if he has put himself in bad com* 
pany he must take the consequences. I said I would have a commis- 
sion of experienced lawyers, men of weight and responsible to public 



82 FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

opinion. Four Irish JndiTfes, for instance, might be appointed, two 
Cathohc and two Protestant ; and to give the CathoHcs all advantage, 
let Lord O'Hagan, the Catholic Irish Chancellor, be Chairman. Let 
these five go through all the surviving memories of the rebeUion of 
1641, and tell us- what it reaUy was. We shall then have sound ground 
tuider us, and we shall know what are, and what are not, the thunder- 
ing lies of which indisputably on one side or the other are now afloat. 
I can conceive of nothing which would better promote a reconciliation 
of England and Ireland than the report which such ' a commission 
would send in. If the heads of the Cathohc Church in Ireland should 
combine to ask for it, I conceive that it would not be refused. For 
myself, I have touched but one point in twenty, relating to this busi- 
ness, where my evidence contradicts Father Burke's. But I wiU pur- 
sue it no further. A few words will exhaust what I have got to say 
about Cromwell. About him I cannot hope to bring Father Burke to 
any approach to an agreement with me. There are a few matters of 
fact, however, which admit of being estabhshed. Father Burke says 
that Cromwell meant to exterminate the Irish. I distinguish again 
between the industrious Irish and the idle, fighting Irish. He -showed 
his intentions toward the peasantry a few days after his landing, for he 
hung two of his troopers for stealing a hen from an old woman. Crom- 
well, says the Father, wound up the war by taking 80,000 men and 
shipping them to sugar plantations in Barbadoes. In six years, such 
was the cruelty that not twenty of them were left — 80,000 men. Father 
Burke, and in six years not twenty left ! I have read the Thurlow pa- 
pers, where the account will be found of these shipments to Barbadoes. 
I can find nothing about 80,000 men there. When were they sent out, 
and how, and in what ships ? You got those numbers where you got 
the 8,000,000 native Irish .in America. Your figures expand and con- 
tract, like the tent in the fairy tale, which would either shrink into a 
walnut shell or cover ten thousand men, as the owners of it liked. 
Father Burke says that all the Irish Catholic land-owners were sent 
to Connaught, Lord Clarendon says that no one was sent to 
Connaught who had not fo«-feited his Hfe by rebellion, and that to 
send them there was the only way to save them from being killed, for 
they woiald not live iuijDeacs. If an Enghshman strayed a mile from 
his door he was nrardered, and there was such exasperation with these 
fighting Irish that if they had been left at home the soldiers would 
have destroyed them all. " Ireland was made a wilderness," says Fa- 
ther BiTrke, and that is true, but who made it so ? The nine years of 
civil war made it so, and it could not revive in a day or in a year. If 
three or four thousand Irish boys and girls were sent as apprentices to 
theplantritious, it was a kiudness to send them there in the condition 
to which Ireland had l)oeu reduced; but when I said that fifteen years 



FKOaDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 33 

of industry had brought the country to a higher state of prosperity 
than it had ever obtaiaed before, I am not answered when I am told 
that it was miserable after the settlers had been at work only for foto 
years. I wiU refer Father Burke, and I will refer you to the " Life o! 
Clarendon," if you wish to see what the Cromwellian settlement made 
of Ireland. Clarendon hated Cromwell, and would allow notiiing in 
his favor that he could' help. Eead it, then, and see which is right — 
Father Burke of I. Never before had Ireland paid the the expenses of 
its own government. It was now able to settle a permanent revenue on 
Charles the Second. In 1665, when many estates were restored to 
Catholic owners, the difficulty was in apportioning the increased value 
which Puritan industry had given to those estates. It is true thalt 
the priests were ordered by Cromwell to leave the country. Father 
Burke says that a price was set on the heads of those that remained. 
In a sense, that too is true : but in what sense ? A thousand went away 
to Spain. Of those that remained, and refused to go ; of those that 
passively stayed, and did not conceal themselves, and allowed »the 
government to know where they were, some were arrested and sent to 
Barbadoes, some were sent to the Irish islands on the west coast, and 
a sum. of money was allowed them for maiutenance. Harsh measures^ 
but Father Burke should be exact in his account. Those who went in- 
to the mountains, and Hved with the outlaws, shared the outlaws' fate. 
They were making themselves the companions of what EngUshmen 
called banditti, what the Irish called patriots. I don't think any way 
they were a good kind of patriots. It is true that a price was set on 
the heads of those who absolutely refused to submit. It was found too 
fatally successful a mode of ending with them. Father Burke quotes 
a passage from Major Morgan, I wiU quote another : "Irishmen,' he 
says, "bring in their comrades' heads, brothers and cousins cut each 
other's throats, " Mr. Prendergrast, a man of most generous disposi- 
tion and passionately Irish in his sentiments, makes a comment on 
these words of Major Morgan, which tempts me to abandon in despair 
the hope of understanding the Irish character, " No wonder they be- 
trayed each other," he says, " because they had no longer any pubhe 
cause to maintain," In speaking of the American Revolution,^ I said 
that a more active sympathy was felt at the time for the American 
cause by the Protestants of the North of Ireland than by the Cathohcs, 
and that more active service was done in America by the Anglo-Scotch 
Irish, who emigrated thither in the eighteenth century, than by the re- 
presentives of the old race. Do not think that I grudge any Irishman 
of any persuasion the honor of having struck a blow at their common 
oppressors when the opportunity offered, I was mentioning, however, 
what was matter of fact, and I wish to remind Americans that there is 
a Protestant Ireland as well as a Catholic, with which they at one time 



■^i FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. 

5jad intimate relations. There is distinct proof that during a gjrijat 
ISiart of the last century there was a continual Protestant emigration 
!feom Ireland to this country. Archbishop Boulter speaks earnestly 
's^jout it in his letters, and states positively that it was an emigration of 
^Protestants only — that it did not effect the Catholics. So grave a mat- 
't'T it was that it formed the subject of long and serious debates in the 
Mrish Parhament. The Catholic emigration, meanwhile, was to France. 
'^A. few Catholic peasants may have come to America after the "White- 
l>oys' rising in 1760, but I have seen no notice of it. Likely enough 
'CaUiohc soldiers deserted from the regiments sent out from Ireland. 
likely enough gallant Catholic Irish gentlemen from the French and 
'Spanish armies may have gone over and taken service with you. I ad- 
xoire them the more if they did. 

Allowing all this, out of ievery ten Irishmen ui, America at the time 
©f the Revolution there must have been nine Protestants. While as to 
■"^e Cathohcs ia Ireland (I would say no more on this Subject if Father 
Surke had laot called on me for an explanation) I can only say that 
•Rffliile the correspondence of the Viceroy expresses the deejiest anxiety 
's& the attitude of the Presbyterians; no hint is di'opped of any fear from 
~1IiiB rest of the population. Father Burke questions my knowledge of 
'iflie facts, and quotes fi-om MacNevin that there were 16,000 Iiish in 
ihs) American ranks. I should have thought there had been more— but 
jE^ither Burke in claiming them for the Cathohcs is playing with the 
•jiaine o'l Irishman. I quoted an addi-ess to George ITT., signed in the 
'iisme of the whole body hj the leading Iiish Catholics. Father- Bui'ko 
iitS^B that, though fulsome in its tone, it contained no words about 
iisBjerica. As he meets me with a contradiction, I can but insist that 
^'t.iopied the words which I read to you from the original in the State- 
^/taper office, and I will read one or two sentences of it again. The ad- 
'olress declares that the Catholics of Ireland abhoiTed the unnatural re- 
^bellion against his Majesty which had broken out among his American 
subjects ; that they laid at his feet tv/o million loyal, faithful and affec- 
'donate hearts and hands, ready to exert themselves against his 
"Majesty's enemies in any part of the world ; that their lojalty had 
"been always as the dial to the sun, true, though not shone upon. 
•'iFather Burke is hasty in telling me that I am speaking of a matter of 
*Tii^ich I am ignorant, but I will pursue it no further, nor, but for its 
'cliallGnge, would I have returned to it.t Both ho and I are now in the 
Tathcr rodicnlous position of contending which of our respective frieuda 
ynire most disloyal to our own government. Here I must leave him. I 
leave untouched a largo number of blots which I had marked for criti- 
rasm, but if I have not done enough to him aheady, I shaU waste my 
•words with trying to do more, and for the future, as long as I remair 
•hi. America, neither he, if he retiu'ns the charge, nor any other assai* 



FROUDE'S ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE. SS? 

ant, must look for fiirtlier answers from me. His own knowledge of hS^ 
subjeot is wide and varied ; but I can compare his workmansMp tO'/ 
nothing so well as to one of the lives of his own Irish saints, in wMcis; 
legend and reality are so stf-angely blended that the true aspect of 
things and character can no longe-r be discerned. I believe that I haT© 
shown that this is the true state of the case, though from the stata di 
Father Burke's mind upon the subject, he may be unaware precisely - 
of what has happened to him. Anyhow, I hope that %e may part in 
good humor ; we may differ about the past, about the present, but iar 
practical objects I beheve we agree. He loves the Irish peasant^ aiad 
Bo do I. I have been accused of having nothing practical to propose?; 
for Ireland. I have something extremely practical ; I want to see th®: 
peasants taken from under the power of their landlords, and made an- 
swerable to no authority but the law. It would not be difficult to de- 
fine for what offense a tenant might be legally deprived of his holding:.. 
He ought not to be dependent o n the caprice of any individual maiu. 
If Father Burke and his friend swill help in that way, instead of agi- 
tatiag for a separation from England, I would sooner find myself' 
working with him than against him. If he will forget my supposed 
hatred to his religion, and will accept the hand which I hold out isn- 
him now, that our fight is over, it is a hatred I can assui-e him, ^wMohj^, 
like some other things^ has no existence exoept la his own ima,^>^ 
nation. f* 



ME. FEOUDE'S LAST VOEDS. 



[LECTURE BY THE VERY REV. FATHER BURKE 

In the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Dec. 17, 1972. 



IiADiES AND Gentlemen : 

I need not tell you that this world in whicli we live is a verjr 
changeable world. We have seen so many changes, ourselves, in oik 
own day, that we have learned to be astonished at nothing. "We have 
Seen but a few years — only four years ago — France reputed the brav- 
est and most powerful nation in Europe ; to-day France is down iu 
the dust, and there is not one that is poor enough to do glorious France 
honor. So, in like nSlnner, a few years ago, when Lord Palmerston 
was at the head of the English ministry, England was considered one 
of the most influe#tial and one of the most powerful nations in Europe; 
and to-day we see how things are changed. In our owj^ time we re- 
member, whenever England had any argument to state, any theory of 
a national Mnd to propound, any cause to defend, she sent her fleets 
and her armies. Even as late as 1858 she had an argument with the 
Emperor of Russia, and she sent her fleets and armies to discuss the 
question at the point of the sword. Later still, a few months I may 
say ago, she had an argument with the Emperor, as he was called, of 
Abyssinia, and she sent her army there to try conclusions, and to 
reason with him; to-day, my friend, she has an argument with L'eland, 
and instead of debating with Lreland, Uy sending some Cromwell over 
there at the head of an army to argue with the L-ish, with the Bible 
in one hand and the sword in the other, she sends over, to America, a 
talking man to talk it over ! She reminds me in this of a man who 
' was once in Galway who had a quarrel with a fi-iend of his, and he 
went and tried to settle the quarrel fanly, like a man, and he got a 
good thrashing; and when he got up after being knocked down severaJ 
times he said, " I see I am not able for you, but I'll tell you what I wiB 
do; my wife has the devil's own tongue, and I will set her at you* En- 
gland has tried issues with my native land for many a long centuiy ; 



>i 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 21 

for seven hundred years on the national question ; for three hundred 
years on the still more important religious question. On the relig- 
ious question England is fairly beaten ; and on the national question, 
although we have not yet triumphed, she has never been able to knock 
the nationahty out of Ireland. So what does she do, my friends ? 
The days are past and gone when she could send her Cromwell or her 
William of Orange to Ireland, and to-day she has nothing better to 
fall back upon than to send an Englishman over to America to abuse 
us ; to try and make out that we are the most ungovernable and the 
most God-abandoned race on the face of the earth. So he comes and 
delivers his message. When first he came he told the people of 
America, if you remember, that he intended, as far as he could, to jus- 
tify England's treatment of Ireland; that this was his intention is 
clearly manifested by the simple fact that he has gone into 
the history of the whole relations between England and Ireland- 
He has gone through them aU. He began with the Norman 
inva^on and he came down to the present year for the sole and 
avowed purpose of whitewashing England as far as he could, and making 
out that she was not as bad as people were inclined to believe her. And 
when he was met on this great issue, my friends, Mr Froude turns 
around and says, " You are slightly mistaken : I don't want a verdict 
from the American people to justify England; to put America in the 
confessional and make England kneel down and get a plenary absolu- 
tion for aU that she did to Ireland. That is not my intention at alL 
My intention is, and the verdict I seek is simply this: There is a move- 
ment going on in Ireland now called the ' Home Rule ' agitation. Irish- 

' men," he says, " are beginning at home to say that they have the right 
to make their own laws, and to be governed by them. They say 

' it is not right, nor fair, nor just that the things that could be so 
weU done at home should be so badly done in London by jnen who 
know very little about Ireland, and who care less. Now," he says, " I 
come to America simply to obtain the verdict of an American public 
opinion to this effect : That the Irish don't know how to govern them- 
selves ; that whatever virtues or talents they may have, they have not 
fche talent nor the virtue of self-government; they are not wise enough, 
they are not. prudent enough ; they are not temperate enough, 
they are not sufficiently civilized nor sufficiently tolerant to govern 
themselves, and I will prove it from their history, and I ask the American 
people to send over word to the Irish, ' Now, boys, have sense; you' 
don't know what is for your own good. You never did, and Mr. Froude 
has brought it home to us. You may have a great many vii-tues, and 
ho acknowledges that you have some, but you have no sense at aU. 
The Enghsh people have twice as much sense^ — and always had — a4 
you have. They know how to go v^ern yOM beautifully — sweetly. Leav« 
yourfielves entirely in theif hands and they will make the finest laws 



S8 FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 

foi your own special benefit. They love you Kke tlie apple of their Gy&. 
Thay are anxious to see Ireland prosperous, wealthy, rich and power- 
ful, they are very anxious to give you all they have themselves, and a 
great deal more, Mr. Froude says. All you have to do now is to 
keep yourselves quiet, leave the parliament where it is, in London. 
Let the English members and the Scotch members, who have a sweeps 
ing maiority, make laws for you, and there will be salutary and beauti- 
ful laws for Ireland. You don't know anything about your own inter- 
ests, nor about the principles of government. You don't un- 
derstand your own country.'" And he expects America, 
like an old woman, to send over their advice to Ireland. 
It is not with Mr. Froude's facts in detail so much that I have to 
deal, as with the spirit of the man. In reply to my lectures he dis- 
tinctly states that he does not seek justification for England's past 
conduct, but that he is here in America to rouse American public 
opinion against the principle, so dear to Irishmen, that* they have and 
that God gas given them the intelligence and capability to make their 
own laws and to be governed by them. He has traced England's 
dealmgs with Ireland, and he has traced them no doubt in a masterly 
manner. But my friends, throughout the leading idea of this historian, 
clearly manifested and avowed by him, is to bring home to every think- 
ing man in this land the conviction that we Irish did not know how to 
govern ourselves. He says: "they have had the country in their own 
hands for centuries, and how did they govern it ? The chieftains were 
harassing the very life out of the people. Ireland was divided into little 
fiactions, and indeed, he went on to say in a manner that does not reflect 
credit upon the man, " every family in the land had its own indepen- 
dence and governed itself. Ireland was divided into small factions, each 
faction had its own chieftain, every chief was engaged from Monday 
morning till Saturday night, including Sunday, in cutting somebody 
else's throat and getting his people into trouble and mischiefl" Accord- 
ing to Mr. Froude it was a miracle from God that there were a hundred 
people left in Ireland at the time when there were three, four or five mil- 
lions» What would you say my friends, if I went back to Ireland, or Eng- 
land, after my year's residence in New York, and said in a public lecture, 
^Do you know what life is in New York or Brooklyn? Every family 
is independent, and every father of a family with his sons are engaged 
every dj>}- in cutting their neighbors' throats, and I will give you proof 
of it — their own newspapers. They tell us that at this moment there 
are eighteer^ or twenty men in jail in New York for murder; how in 
the saloons and drinking places they stab one another, and shoot 
one another ; they tell us how men are knocked down in the street, how 
a gentleman Uv'>»ti Kentucky walked out of the hotel and sight or light 
of him was never Been again; how the people are barbarians and pavagee^ 
worse than tbo red Indians." Now I ask you, jf I went back tc Z^ublu* 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDiJ. 39 

or London and said these words, how would you feel about 5t ? Would 
you say I Was telling the truth ? Or»would you not say, " Oh ! Lord, 
I didn't think Father Tom Burke was such an infernal liar!" 

I assert that there is not a people living, more capable of self-govern ■ 
ment and of making their own laws and abiding by them, than the Irish 
people, to which I belong, and I will prove it from Mr. Froude himself. 
I will not go outside of him. Mr. Froude admits, as every thinking 
man must, that the great elements of self-government amongst a people 
are, first of all, respect for justice and for law; secondly, fidelity to prin* 
ciple; thirdly, afirection and love for the law ; and fourthly, a capability oi 
being formed by those who govern them and direct them. These are the 
four great attributes that belong to a people and that entitle them, if they 
have them, to the right of self-government. I grant you, that if a race 
or a people had no respect for the law, despised the law, and were 
anxious to violate it precisely because it wlas the law, that people don't 
deserve the power of making their own laws, and it would be " a mercy 
from God" if somebody would make laws for them. But are the Irish 
that people? Listen, my friends. Mr. Froude in the course of his 
lectures has quoted frequently a great authority in Irish history, viz., 
Sir John Davis, who was Attorney General in the reign of James I. This 
was an Englishman, or I believe, Welshman, who came over from Eng' 
land for the express purpose of plundering the Irish, stealing from the 
people; and he accordingly accumulated vast wealth and had great estates 
in Ireland. Yet this man writes these words " There is no people under 
Heaven that love equal and fair justice like the Irish; there is no 
people" he adds, who are more willing to submit to fair, impartial 
justice, though it go against themselves, than the Irish." Elsewhere he 
writes, " When things are peaceful, and no war is going on, the Irish 
are far more fearful of oflfending against the law than the English." 
If I quoted some Donough O'Brien, or some Terence O'lsTeill, or if I 
quoted the Four Masters, Mr. Froude would turn round on me and say 
*' Ah ! ah ! ! do you hear the friar quoting the old Franciscans, and the 
old Irish Monks, Oh ! he would say, if he knew Irish, but he hasn't the 
grace to know it, Gonosha dhioling. 

But I have been reviewing the lectures in which I answered Mr. 
Froude, and although a New York newspaper has charged me with 
quoting Catholic authorities, I protest to you, my friends, I can say 
with truth, from the first words of those lectures down to the last, 
every single authority quoted by me was a Protestant and an English- 
man. And does not the history of Ireland bear ont the truth of what 
Sir John Davis says ? There were two parties in Iceland for seven 
hundred years, ray friends ; there were the old native Irish,' the Mac's 
and O's, the O'Connors, the O'Briens, the McMurroughs, the O'lSTeills 
and the O'Donnells. These were the genxdne Irish ; it was to these 
men that God Almighty had given Ireland ; and the soil was theirs^ 



iO FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE, 

for they held it by the right by which every people holds its own land, 
viz., the right of a gift from God/ Then came the Normans-^-the Fitz- 
geralds, the De Courcys, the Butlers, the Burkes; and when they 
entered Ireland they became, in a hundred years, " more Irish than the 
Irish themselves ;" that is the old phrase Mr. Froude quotes, and says. 
Perhaps Father Burke never heard of that phrase." That phrase we 
ve all heard, ever since we were weaned. But I remark, in all Mr. 
Froude's reply to me, that he takes it for granted — I suppose because 
I am an Irishman — that I know nothing about my native land — " Per- 
haps Father Burke doesn't know this, and perhaps Father Burke 
doesn't know that, but I will tell him what /know." He says : " Per- 
haps Father Burke doesn't know that the Normans were more Irish 
than the Irish themselves." They were. But of all the traits of the 
Irish character that they took up, the most prominent amongst those 
in which they became more Msh than the Irish themselves was their 
love of fighting and devilment in general. They became the most un- 
ruly lot in the land, and we have the proof of it in this : that we have 
the Earl of Surry writing home to Harry the VIII,, who had sent him 
to Ireland, telling him about the Irish chieftains — the Mac's and the 
O's — that "They are wise men, your Majesty, and good and quiet men, 
greatly better than the English." 

If the first element and the first attribute of a people to entitle them 
to self-government be a respect for justice and for law, I hold, upon the 
evidence of English authorities, that no man can deny to the Irish 
nation the right given by God to every people to govern themselves 
according to their own laws. 

And there- is another trait in the character of the Irish people that 
Mr. Froude brings out, both in his lectures and in former essays, and it 
is well worthy of remark. He says : " They are a people that are 
singularly . adapted to good government." And do you know the 
instance he gives ? He says in one of his essays : " Take a wild, ragged 
peasant boy, ready to fling up his caubeen into the air and hurrah for 
Smith O'Brien, and hurrah for every Fenian, and for every Irish pat- 
riot — catch that boy " — catch him — as if he were talking of some 
young beast or savage — " Catch him, drill him and teach him, and in a 
few years you will have one of the finest policemen on the face of the 
earth." And this he gives as a good instance that the Irish people, as 
he asserts, are capable of a perfect discipline, under good and perfect 
government. Now, I take* him on that point, and I eay,^f, accordhig 
to you, my learned friend, a year or two of discipline, and of justice, 
and of good government will make such a perfect subject out of an 
Irishman, tell us, if you please, Mr. Froude, how is it that for sevec 
hundred years you have never been able to make good subjects out «^' 
of them ? The reason is that, for seven hundred years, Ireland hs: 
never known for twenty-four consecutive hours what good governmeai 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO EROUDE. 41 

or sensible government 'meant. The Scripture says that one of the 
greatest curses that can fall upon a people is to give them a child for 
their King ; that is to say, one without reason — without wisdom. And 
the curse of Ireland has been that she has been governed for seven 
hundred years, not by one child, nor by one booby, but by a nation of 
boQbies, that never knew how to govern. Any other people, under the 
same government, would have been driven mad. The Irish have only 
been made national, every man of them, to the heart's core. 

The third great element that asserts peoples right to govern them- 
selves is their fidelity to principle. A man without principle cannot 
govern himself, and a nation without principle loses the great right to " 
self-government by the judgment of God. "What do I mean by princi- 
ple ? I mean certain ideas of right and wrong, fixing themselves in 
the mind, and in the heart and in the conscience of people and taking 
such hold of that heart, mind and conscience that no power on earth 
or in hell can tear those principles out of the national mind. 

Show me a single principle in the history of the English people to 
which they have clung with this fervor. There is not one, except in- 
deed, if you will, the principle of extending their Empire by robbery 
and by the confiscation of their neighbors' goods. Was the principle 
of devotion so fixed in their minds? No ! for at the bidding of Harry 
the VIII. they changed their religion. Was the principle of devotion to 
the throne so fixed in their minds ? No ! for at the wave of Cromwell's 
Bword all England bowed before him, and Englishmen cheered him iu 
the day when he cut off the head of England's King. What principle is 
there revealed in the, philosophy of their history for which that people 
were ever prepared to suffer, much less to die ? Now, the whole his- 
tory of the Irish race, from the day their history commences down to 
this hour, is marked with the assertion of eternal principle, no matter 
at what sacrifice or cost. 

The first and the strongest principle that can govern the heart, 
and the mind, and the conscience of any man, and consequently of any 
people, is their fidelity to what they know to be the truth and their 
duty to God Unless you admit this religious principle in the mind 
and in the conscience of the man with whom you have to deal, the less 
you have to say to him, the less you trust him the better. Tell me, my 
friends, is there a man amongst you would place say, $10,000 on trust, 
depending on the honor of a man who told you he had no religious 
principle whatever ; that he had no rules governing his conscience ; 
that he did not care that! (snapping his fingers) for religion ? You 
would take good care to keep your money out of his hands. Ireland 
for 1500 years has held the Catholic faith amongst the nations. The 
Catholic faith has three effects, operating upon the man and conse- if 
quently upon the people who profess it. First of all, it acts upon the 
intellect as a conviction of the strongest kind, the intellect assenting to , 



42 FATHER BUEKE'S EEPLY TO FROUDE. , 

its truths. Secondly, it acts upon the heart, purifying the aflections 
and strengthening all the emotions of the sphit in man. Thirdly, it 
acts upon the conscience in the form of a strict, immutable, unchang- 
ing law, to which every man who professes it — be he great or 
small, gentle or simple — must bow down and conform himself alike. 

I assert that the Catholic rehgion alone possesses this triple inj&u- 
ence over the intelligent heart and conscience of man, and I will prove 
it in three words, although it does not enter into the subject of my 
lecture. First of all, it acts upon the intellect alone of all rehgions. 
The Catholic rehgion alone tells a man what to beheve, and teUs him 
that with so much certainty that he is not at Hberty to change it. 
The best Protestant in the nation can become a Methodist, or a Qua- 
ker, or a Mormon, or anything. On one Sunday, if he hkes, he will go 
to hear Mr. So-and-so, and the next Simday he will go to hear some- 
body else. On one day he will hear the Revemed So-and-so say that 
black is white, and next Sunday the Reverned Mr. So-and-so wiD tell 
him that white is black. 

He has no fixed principle of behef ; he has no r&al, unchanged in- 
tellectual faith at all ; his mind is hke the general highway : every 
travelling thought and fancy may pass along there. The Cathohc j'ehgion 
alone influences the heart ; and I assert this for her on the simple 
grounds that she alone takes hold of the heart of a man and fixes it for- 
ever in one form of affection or love. If she calls that man to the 
Priesthood, she consecrates him forever to the love of the Church, the 
Altar, and the souls of his brethren. Not a single thought, nor affec- 
tion, nor emotion of any other love must ever disturb it. In this she 
acts upon the heart. She seals with her sacremental blessing the mat- 
rimonial bonds, and they are fixed forever. Heaven and earth may 
move, but that man and that woman are inseparably united ; their en- 
gagement may never be broken ; their vow may never he violated ; and 
"when the Cathohc Church binds, the husband to the wife and the wife 
to the husband, in immutable and mutual fidelity and love, the oath is 
as iL^achangeable as that oath which binds Jesus Christ to his Church. 
Fin^Jly, she alone lays hold of the conscience of a man, takes and 
brings him face to face with himself, teaches him to look at himself 
with fearless eyes, teaches him in her sacrament and in her confessional 
to bring up all that was basest, vilest, meanest, and most shameful of 
his sins, lay them out vmder his own eyes and confess them with his 
lips. 

And I say that this fii'st principle of fidehty in a nation is the fidehty 
to the principle of their religion. For 1,500 years Ireland steadily, he- 
roici'y, conscientiously held that Cathohc faith. For 300 years the 
DaB 2s endeavored to change that faith into paganism ; for the Danish 
war ivas a religious war. Ireland fought — fought with heroic strength 
— fcaght with unfailing arm — fought with undying though bleeding 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 43 

heart — and for 300 years slie struggled until at leng-th slie cast th^ Dane 
to the earth and the Christ put his feet on the neck of the pagan Thor 
of the Scandinavian. Another cycle of 300 years came, and it was no 
longer the Dane, but it was the Saxon that held his sword at the 
throat of Ireland and said, even as the Dane of old said to her, " Oh ! 
Erin! Paganism or death !" So he said to her, " Protestantism or 
death!" and Ireland answered, as she had answered the Dane, "I will 
■fight, I wiU suffer, I wiU die. AH this I know how to do, 
and well ; but my faith I never wiU change from God^ 
fro;n Ins Christ and from his holy Church. And jiist as after 300 years 
of war, on that Good Friday morning, the sun rising from the heavens 
beheld an Irish king and his Irish army stand in triumph, pealing forth 
their songs of victory over the stricken and conquered Danes, so after 
300 years of the second cycle the sun arose on that fair May morning 
in '29, and beamed upon the face of the great O'Connell and the Irish 
Nation, waving over the ruined battlements of the tjTant and of the old 
blood-stained Protestant Established Chiirch of Ireland, the glorious 
banner of religious^ equality and freedom which was to be ours for ever. 
Does Mr. Froude tell me or tell America that a people that have 
stood in the -gap for 600 years, faithful to the fii'st principle, the 
rehgious principle, the principle that includes every other form of virtue 
and principle and which, if a man is faithful to it, will make him honest, 
upright, faithful in his commercial, domestic, civil and national re_ 
lations — does the man mean, to tell me that the Enghsh, a people that 
have never shown that fidehty of principle either to faith, country, or 
king, are fitted by the Almighty God to govern and to make laws for 
such a people as the Irish ? It is worthy of remark, my dear friends, 
that even their loyalty to the king they carried, as Catholics, into their 
relations of hfe. Where were there a people so loyal even to the kings 
who were so unjust to them ? I scarcely mention it to their praise — 
I scarcely look upon it as praiseworthy, but I must say it. "Whenever 
England revolted against her king, Ireland stood by and said, " I will 
not change ; if he was my king yesterday, he's my king to-day and I 
will be faithful." Charles I. was king in Ireland ; England rebelled 
against him, ParHament rose against him ; the Scotch rebelled against 
him, but Ireland came out like one man and said "this man has done 
nothing to forfeit my allegiance, I wiU not give up my loyalty." James 
II. fled from England, and the English people said "Well, let him go — " 
.and indeed they were right. But poor foolish Ireland, strong in the 
principle, of loyalty — strong on principle — said, " I will fight for him; 
he's my king, if he was my king yesterday and I was obliged to obey him, 
why shall I not obey him to-day ?" So they took him, fought for him,, 
bled for him profusely. I mention this only to show you that Mr. 
Froude's argument against Ireland's self-government, based on the 
Irish want of principle is fallicious and I gather up his assertions 



44 FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 

from out the liistory of .England, and fling them in Ms face and tell him 
to go home with them. 

The Irish people have shown the four great attributes which entitle 
a people to self-government, viz : they not only have love of justice and 
obedience to law, but they love the law, provided it be a just and nat- 
ural law ; they let it sink into their lives ; they are willing to conform 
all their actions to it ; their love for good law is only second to the love 
which they bear to their religion. And this I will prove. For 400 
years England strove with might and main to change the laws of Ire- 
laud, and she failed. 

From the year that Strongbow landed in 1169, until that year in 
the 16th century when Henry VIII. was proclaimed " King of Ireland," 
after many hundred years, the Irish people, in spite of all the efforts of 
England, were governed by their old Brehon laws and lived under 
them and obeyed them, they were right. I teU you, my friends, that 
there is one portion of Irish history; which is not sufficiently known, 
nor sufficiently considered by the people, either 'in Ii-eland or in 
America, nor by historians like my friend Mr. Froude. 

We are all accustomed to-day to speak of the Constitution of America 
as one of the most glorious principles and the most glorious on the face 
of the earth. And why ? Because that Constitution gives the most 
liberty of any other; the most hberty to every citizen of the State, no 
matter how humble he may be ; because that Constitution will not rec- 
ognize the right of any one man in the State to injure or tyrannize 
over another; because that Constitution admits State Government on 
terms of equahty. Every State having its own laws ; having its own 
Government, having its own Executive ; having its owiifunctions. That 
Constitution has known how to reconcile individual liberty and State 
Hberty with a strong central government which is represented in the 
President of the United States, who is elected every four years. 

If we look back among the nations of the earth we do not find State 
governments in any of the old nations of Europe, nor any of the modern 
nations. At this very day we find England, having robbed Ireland of her 
State government, having robbed Scotland of her State government ; we 
find Bismarck plotting to rob the German States of their State govern- 
ments, and to concentrate all the authority in the hands of three or four 
men, that they may have absolute power over the lives almost, and cer- 
tainly over the liberties of their fellow-citizens. We find nothing like 
American constitutional liberty elsewhere ; we find nothing like the Ameri- 
can Constitution in its' grand principle that the wisdom of the whole nation 
ie appealed to, and every man is asked his opinion as to who is the best 
citizen in the land, — who is the wisest, bravest, most virtuous man — to be 
put in the Presidential chair, and be, for the time being, the supreme 
magistrate and ruler of the land. If you go back amongst the ancient 
nations you will find nothing like this until you come upon the ancient Cel- 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. **5 

• 
tfc Constitution of Ireland. There, my friends, ^ill you find the very 
model and type of that glorious government which Washington. Jefferson 
and the other heroes and patriots of the revolutionary war established for 
the happiness of this land. • They found the model of the American 
Constitution in the ancient Celtic Constitution of Ireland. The land was 
divided into five great portions, and each portion was recognized as an 
independent State— Munster, Connaught, Ulster, Leinster and Meath— 
pea-fectly independent one from the other. They were governed by great 
chieftains who were elected by every man in the land — every man had a 
i voice and vote. The tribe elected their chief ; the tribe elected the man 
i wbo was to succeed the chieftain, and these five great nations or tribes 
• enjoyed on the Democratic principle their State rights and State inde- 
pendence. Then at certain times they had the election for their Presi- 
dent. They came together and elected the bravest, the best, the wisest, 
the most prudent and virtuous man, and placed him upon the throne in 
Tara as the universal King or Ard Rigli of all Ireland. He governed the 
raxious States, but he was careful to respect their independence. There" 
was no concentration. The King of Ulster, the Prince of Connaught, the 
King of Munster, rode down from the hall of Tara, after they had elected 
iheir supreme King, as perfectly free and independent in their State rights 
as if they never had elected a King to govern them all. No matter what 
th-e faulfs of that old Irish Constitution were, and they were many, I 
claim for it in this century, and at this hoar, that the American Constitu- 
tion is nothing more nor less than a faithful copy of the old Irish laws 
under which our fathers lived in 'peace and happiness until as, in a mo- 
ment of anger, the God of Heaven sent down fire upon the cities of old, 
so the Saxon was let down \ipon the Irish race to blast ourliappiaess and 
destroy our nation's laws and Constitution. 

If time permitted I could compare the freedom, the equality, the graryl 
republican liberty of the Irish Constitution with the grinding tyranny of 
that absolute feudal system under which England was governed and which 
they endeavored to establish in I^:eland, The King was the absolute lord 
and master of every inch of the land. Every man who held land held it 
by virtue of the King, and on the condition of doing whatever the King 
commanded him to do. In other words, he held it upon the condition of 
slavery. Then the tenants were the mere serfs or slaves of the owner of 
the land. If he injured them in person or property there was no redress. 
Their domestic affairs were left under his control. If ^e son or daughter 
of a family died he could seize upon their property and squander it, and 
no one could call him to account. The King of England could, as he 
often cHd, beggar the first families in the land and no one could call him 
to account, because,.by the feudal law, the King was not accountable for 
what he did. God bless us and save us from such a law ! 

Well, my friends, there was a great laugh the other night iu the *' As- 
sociation Hall," I believe thatia the name, in New York. It was a laugh 



40 FATHER BURKE'S REPLIT TO FROUDE. 

raised by the English historian at the expense of the poor Irish friar. 
The historian says that whatever else Father Barke is, he is a wonderful 
man at totting up numbers. He was kind enough to make for me a tot 
that I never made myself. I asserted, not upon my own authority, but I 
expressly stated that I heard men say that there were probably fourteen 
illions of human beings of Irish descent and Irish blood in this land of 
merica. Making up the account of the millions that went from Ireland 
I asserted that perhaps there were eight millions of people who came to 
this countiy, Mr. Froude totted the eight up to fourteen, and then made 
it twenty -two. That had not entered my head, but he was kind enough 
to lend me the use of his brains. Then Mr. Froude came out with hi9 
account, and according to him of all the millions in America there are only 
four millions altogether with a drop of Irish blood in their veins. Well, 
perhaps I overshot the mark a little, but I protest to you I da not think I 
did. I think that if all the men, women and children of Irish descent 
were put together men would be greatly surprised to see how many mil- 
lions they would foot up. Friends, we were in Ireland nine and a quarter 
millions in 1846 j there is not half that number in Ireland to-day, and there 
has not been for some years. It is acknowledged that one aud a half or 
two millions may have been swept away by visitation of God, the terrible 
famine or pestilence that ensued, but still you have to account for three 
or four millions that must have emigrated, gone somewhere. Where are 
they then ? Since the year 1847 every year hundreds of thousands have 
been sent out to America. They must be found somewhere. These Irish 

jBen have families like other people, arfd, generally speaking, good long 
¥" amilies, too. It was only the other day I got a letter from an old school 

iellow, a play-Tnate of mine, who came to this country some years ago. 
in his letter he said: ''Dear Father Tom ; Glad to hear you are well 
T married since I came to America and there is eight of them on the floor !" 
It has been almost proved by statistics published in an Irish journal in 
New York this very week, that there must be at least some twelve mil- 
lions of Irish descent in America, and I hold that twelve millions is not 
80 far from fourteen as four millions from twelve. If I made a mistake in 
the number of two millions, Mr. Frou(ia certainly under-estimated it by 
eight millions, and I thank God there are eight millions more of Irish peo- 
ple in this land than Mr. Froude thought. It is a very important fact 
for the learned gentleman. Perhaps if he knew that the four millions were 
something more lik^t fourteen millions he would be more careful and take 
more thought before he came to America to blackguard them before their 
fellow-citizens. 

The next great point he made against me is that I said, when the Irish 
rose in the rebellion, as he calls it, in 1641. I denied that they massacred 
thirty-eight thousand Protestants. My friends, you know there are two 
Ways of looking at everything, and there are two names of course for every- 
thing, even a man. A mau'o iiii'uda chilli him a kind hearted fellow, hifl 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. ** 

enemies say he is a dirty rascal. There was a rising in Ireland iu 1641, 
Mr. Froude calls it a rebellion, but the parliament of England rebelled 
against the King, the Scots rebelled against the King, though he was one 
of their own countrymen, and the Irish people rose iu the name of the King, 
and demanded of him- as the reward, literally and truly, I can call it 
nothing else, leave to live in their own land and exercise their own religion, 
and the King promised he would give it, and the promise was called the 
'' graces of the King.*' A certain Irish nobleman, Sir Phelim O'Neill, r 
headed that rising, and he produced a document, purporting to be signed 
and sealed by the King of England, and he told them that he had authority ^ 
from the King to call upon them to rise. That document was forged, like ;. 
many another document. It was as great a forgery as the bull of Pope 
Adrian, pretending to give Ireland to England, as confounded a forgery as 
ever came out of hell. Sir Phelim O'Neill when dying, acknowledged that 
the document was a forgery. But the Irish people believed him when he 
said it was a genuine document, and they rose in the name of the King, 
and Froude calls it a rebellion because it was a forged document. Suppose 
some one brings a check to you and says, " Will you cash that for me ? It 
is all right." You think it is all right and you cash it, but on presenting it 
at the bank the banker takes you by the throat and calls you a thundering 
robber, declaring that the check is a forgery. You say, '' I am very sorry, 
I am the sufferer, P have lost my money. Don't call me a forger.** Yet 
Mr. Froude calls it a rebellion because the document was forged. And he 
quotes Sir John Temple as his authority that 38,000 Protestants were 
slaughtered.* Now Mr. Fronde knew very well when quoting that authority 
that there was another English authority who says there were 200,000 
Protestants killed and that was Sir William Petty. Mr. Froude quotes' 
Sir William Petty in several cases, but he does not quote him for the 
200,000, but pares it down to 38,000. Do you know the reason why T 
Because it happens that there were not as many as 200,000 Protestants in 
Ireland at the time, hence there could not be that number killed ! 

So Mr. Froude said, " I will not quote him but' I will quote the other liar 
who said there were 38,000 killed. Is it not strange that at that very time 
a Presbyterian minister went through Ireland for the express purpose of 
finding out how many there were killed, and he declares that there were 
only 4,100 at the very outside, and he does not believe there were so many 
as that. And yet this man comes to America and repeats most emphatically 
the old lie which was exploded years and years ago, and all to make the 
American people believe that the Irish cannot govern themselves. But, 
on the other hand, we have an account of another massacre in which 3,000 
Catholics were killed by the garrison at Oarrikfergus. But Mr. Froude 
says Father Burke knows how to tot very well. '' There were only 30 
people killed and he makes out 3,000." "Well, my friends, accordmg to 
a Protestant authority it was 30 families, and there is a great deal of dif-' 
ference between 30 persons and 30 Irish families of nine or ten person* 



48 FATHER BUEKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 

each. "Within ten years after the event took place, there was published 
in England an account that asserted there was 3,000 men, women and 
children killed in that massacre, and the man who published ifc defied any 
one to contradict the statement, and no man ever gainsayed it, 

Mr. Froude attaches great importance to this business of the massacre 
ef 1641, and says : let a commission be sent over to Dublin to search the 
state papers, and let the Lord Chancellor be on it, and this and that lord 
be on it, and they will find I am right and Father Burke is wrong. I 
answer I will not go rummaging among state papers, for a majority of 
them are attrocious lies, written by courtiers and interested men who are 
plundering the Irish people and are always anxious to print some excuse 
to justify their plundering them. Thus they are now accusing our 
fathers of crimes in order to justify their own acts. I will not go to these 
but take the particular statement that was published at the very time 
and was not denied even by the men who had a hand in the massacre. 

He reiterates, and I am sorry to say it, the charge of cowardice against 
the Irish. In answering my lectures he said, '' I never doubted Irish courage 
I never denied it," but last night he repeated his statement, that the Irish 
did not know how to fight. Although it is a strange thing, for in another 
part of his lectures he acknowledges that all the evils of Ireland arose 
out of the irrepressible love the people had for fighting. And he assertsr 
again that the Irish troops did not behave well ^t the battle of the 
Boyne. What have I to say, my God, except to appeal to history, not 
to Catholic or Irish but English Protestant history. The Duke of Ber- 
wick, an Englishman, who commanded at the battle of the Boyne, says, 
that '' King James brought all the French troops around him to guard 
his person and left the brunt of the battle to fall upon the Irish regiments. 
King James on that day, with the French, Irish and all was only able to 
put 23,000 men in the field, whereas William of Orange had 50,000 men 
and 50 pieces of artillery. King James had only 12 pieces of artillery, 
and he sent six away the night before, so he had only six on the field 
The Williamites crossed the Boyne, and the Duke of Berwick tells us the 
Irish infantry and cavalry charged that entire army ten times before they 
retreated from the field. And it was only when they found that it was not in 
the power of human beings for so small an army to make an impression upon, 
and rout 50,000 warriors, only then they retired. In the second siege of 
Athlone, Major Fitzgerald commanded 400 men j there was an army of 
18,000 against him, and he held out until out of that 400 only 200 were 
left. , If Mr. Froude calls this cowardice, I don't know what he under- 
stands by courage. I think it would be time enough for the learned gen- 
tleman to accuse the men of Ireland of cowardice when he finds he can 
accuse the women of Ireland of hei^g cowards. 

When William of Orange laid siege to Limerick, the first siege, he battered 
down the walls until he made a breach twelve feet wide, and then picked 
out 12,000 of hifl best soldiers and sent them to enter the city, and when 



• • 



' FATHER BUEKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 49 

• 
they came to climb the ruined ramparts they found the women, the pure 

women, the holy maidens, the pure mothers of Limerick, standing side by 

side, and shoulder to shoulder with their brothers, husbands and fathers, 

and the women beat back the 12,000 Englishmen. And when they with- 

' drew they left 2,000 of their dead before the walls of the grand old city. 
Moreover, the learned gentleman — I declare I am beginning to doubt 
whether he is a learned gentleman — says that when James confiscated 
six counties of Ulster, it was all a piece of good nature on the part of 
James to turn the Irish out, for he let them all in again. True, he says, 
James confiscated 2,500,000 acres of land, but he gave back 2,000.000- 
and kept. -500,000 for the Scotchmen and Englishmen that he brought over.. 
How would you like it, my friends, to have the United States Mai^hal! 
come with soldiers and order you out of your house or stores and compeli 
you to leave ; keep you out in the streets two or three days, then come 
and say, " Oh, you are a good fellow, go back again." How would jow- 
like it ? But according to Mr. Froude, as the Irish people,, after being; 
robbed of 2,500,000 got back 2,000,000, they ought to be happy and con- 
tented. Again, how did they get back these 2000,000? According to Mr.. 
Froude, by taking the oath of allegance ; now the oath of allegiance, is tO' 
be good and peaceful c itizens. But there was another oath that they wera- 
obliged to take, the oath of supremacy by which they abjured the Catholfc 
religion, and no man ceuld go back until he had declared his disbelief in 

■■ the religion of his fathers, and practically become an Infidel or a Protestant, 

• Mr. Froude does not mention that, but Cox, the historian, who wrote the 
' history of those times, mentions it. And then when he had swallowed the 

pill of Protestantism, perjured his soul, in what capacity was he let back? 

• The English settlers found the land was too much for them. They found 
they could not till and work it, and so they said to the King, '' What is the 
nse of giving us all this land unless you allow us to employ the Irish 
people here to work it ?" And then he gave them leave to let the Irish 
work it ; living in mud cabins, as tenants, provided they would swear 
away their religion ! Yet Mr. Froude says, James was so good, so kind, so 
benign, and only asked them to take the oath of allegiance ! 

There are two ways of telling a story, and I begin to think there are 
two ways of writing history. Mr. Froude says to the American people : 
*' Please give me your verdict ; say once for all to Irishmen in America 
* stop this nonsense about independence for Ireland ; be quiet and peace- 
ful ; let England make the laws for Ireland, because the people do not 
know how to make them, and made bad laws in 1782 when England 
granted complete and total independence to the Irish parliament.' " That 
is true ; but how did she grant it ? When the volunteers drew up their 
cannon, and had them loaded, and their torches lit, and around the mouth 
of each cannon a little label on which these words were written : '' Free- 
dom for the Irish parliament, or else ." England gave Ireland her 

independence in 1782 in the same way that you would give up your puxae 



50 FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 

to a man who took out a Derringer revolver apd said, '' Give me thai 
purse or take tho contents of this." But Mr. Froude says that only six- 
teen years after the Irish people were allowed to make their own laws 
they rui^.lied into a conspiracy, and from conspiracy into rebellion. I 
answer, Mr. Froude is wrong when he says that it was the independence 
if 1782 that caused the rebellion of 1798. I answer secondly, that the 
iidependence of 1782 did not represent the Irish people in that Irish 
parliament. There were 300 members of that House of Commons, and 
of these 300 only 72 were elected by the people, all the rest were nomin- 
ated by the landlords and aristocracy who picked up any man who would 
vote according to their wish and desire. There were at that time 3,000,- 

000 of Catholics in Ireland and 500,000 or 600,000 Protestants. On 
the one side you have half a million of comparative strangers, men who 
came into Ulster under James I. and Cromwellians, who were settled in 
Munster, planted by Cromwell and his successors ; men without a drop of 
Irish blood in their veins. On the other side were the 3,000;000 of Irish 
|>eople, firm as a rock to the religion of their fathers. 

Now, that parliament of 1782 represented only the 500,000 strangers. 
Not a single Catholic in Ireland sat in that parliament. Patriotic as it was 

1 deny that it represented the Irish nation. Grattan himself seems to 
have had remorse in claiming independence for the representatives, for he 
Mid: ** I will never ask for independence for 600,000 Protestants, whilst 
I leave 3,000,000 of Catholics in slavery." I deny that it was an Irish 
parliameat, and I hold that Mr. Froude baa b» business to tell us becauM 
a few Protestant Orangemen in 1782 did not know how to govern Ireland 
therefore the Irish people did not know how to elect their own members 
and make their own laws. But bad as that parliament was, and corrupt 
as it was, it was not the cause of the rebellion of 1798. No, no, so long 
as the muse of Irish history writes, will it go down to future generationg 
that a premeditated design of the Prime Minister of England and the pre- 
meditated action of the Government of England drove the Irish people 
into the rebellion of 1798. It was done calmly, coolly, and with a pur- 
pose. • William Pitt resolved to pass the act of Union and rob the Irish 
people of their parliament. He could not do it unless he disturbed the 
country, and by disturbing it destroy it. He deliberately goaded the Irish 
people into rebellion and sent over troops to Ireland who were quartered 
on the people and committed such ravages — burning houses, killing the 
men, worse than killing the women, that the people were maddened into 
rebellion, and we have the proof of it in the fact that when the gallant 
Sir Ralph Abercronibie was made commander of the forces in Ireland, 
before the rebellion, he found the army he came to command in such a 
state, that after reproaching them for their wickedness and insubordina- 
tion, he gave up the command and washed his hands clear of them. Sir 
John Moore, the Hero of Coru;ma, gives us testimony to the same eiToct. 
Take the celebrated Father John Murphy, who headed the rebela Ip. 



FATHER BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 5% 

1798. He was a quiet, peaceable priest, going round among the people, 
taking care of his chapel and chapel-house, and going through his quiet 
duties. He went out to attend a dying penitent, and when he came back 
be found his chapel-house burned to the greund. The poor people, driven 
from their bouses, were, huddled together, and as he came up to them they 
asked him, " What in the name of God are we to do ? It is impof sible to 
live in this country. It would be better to be dead." He answered like 
a true man, '' It would not be better to be dead, but it would be better to 
take np your pikes and strike in the name of God." 

My dear friends, I am not a warrior, nor a man of war or blood, nor a 
man of revolution, I am the quietest and most peaceful of men, but I de- 
clare to you I do not know what I should have done if in Father John 
Murphy's place, except what Father John himself did. 

But after .all, these thing are questions of the past, and we are more in- 
terested in the questions of the present and the future than we are in th© 
things of the past. The question after all is, is all this to be continued I 
Is all this injustice, all this coercion, all this grasping at a nation, keeping 
it down, all this assertion that the people have no right nor title to govern 
themselves, all this justification of tyranny and spoliation, is all this to con_ 
tinue? Well, according to Mr. Froude, I am afraid it must continue. If^ 
he is the authority, I do not see any way out of the difficulty except two ; 
first, to come to America, and lastly, remainingall athome and being coerced 
into submission. I do not like bragging or boasting, but I am not blind 
to the signs of the times, and I may tell Mr. Froude that the Irish people 
are not prepared to emigrate altogether. To be sure, it may be pleasant 
to cross, the Atlantic — I did not find it very pleasant — and it may be a 
fine and pleasant thing to find a home and freedom and everything the 
heart could desire in America. Many of you have found it, and the more 
you find it the better pleased I will be. But after all there is such a coun 
try as Ireland on the face of the earth, and a sweet old country I have 
found it to be ; and there are such a people as the Irish people who have 
held that land for ages and ages, for weal and for woe, and that land God 
gave to the Irish people, and with the blessing of God that land will be^ 
long to the Irish people until the day of Judgment. Mr. Froude's scheme 
of a universal emigration is a wild dream. I knewhim to be a philosopher, I 
suspected him to be a historian, but I did not think or iyiagine him to be 
a poet until I heard him talk of a universal emigration of the Irish race. 

If the agitation for ''Home Rule" continues, he says : ''The only 
way is to coerce us into submission. That is the old legisLntion for Ire- 
land. I remember in my own days if th*e people wanted anything. 
Catholic emancipation or parliamentary reform, the way we were treated 
by the English government was to pass a coercion bill, and this was 
often followed by martial law, the people being ground to the very earth, 
00 man allowed to speak his opinion. This is Mr. Fronde's second remedy^ 
[ may as well tell him that the time for coercion bills" has gone by ; we 



52 FATHF-K BURKE'S REPLY TO FROUDE. 

"will have no more of thi^m, and I will tell you what has assisted in passing 
them away for ever. You will be surprised to hear it from me, but I 
may as well speak my secitiuients and my convictions, and I verily believe 
that the national schools a' Ireland with all their faults have put an end 
to cof rcion bills forever. You may as well try to stop the sweeping of 
the hurricane by putting up your feeble hand against it; you may as 
well try to stop the lightnings of heaven by holding up your fingers against 
them, as try to stop by coercion the expression of the minds and desii-es 
of an educated people. It will never be done. The Irish people to-day 
are at an average as well educated as aay oi her people in the world. You 
rarely meet in Ireland a man or woman who does not know how to read 
and write, and you will rarely meet a maE who does not feel a mixture 
of joy, and pride, and anger, when he reads or hears of the wrongs and 
glories of his old country. England, says Mr. Froude, is greatly afraid 
she will have to go back to measures of coercion again. I tell hini she 
■will not have to go back to them again for the reason that she will not 
be able. 

What fate is before Ireland ? 0, my friends, what car 1 say ? Before 
me lies the past of my native land : I can weep over her wrongs. Be* 
fore me lies the Ireland of to-day, and I can sympathize with heir sorrows. 
I believe I can see the dawning of her hopes. Of the future it beeomes 
me not specifically to speak. I am a man of peace not of war. It only 
remains for ma to say that next to the duty I owe to God and His holy 
altar is the duty that I owe to thee Oh ! Land of Ireland ; — to pray for 
thee, to sigh for thy coming glory, and to be ready — whenever the neces- 
sary conditions will convince me that the fit hour has come — TO TAKE A 
man's part m THE TINDICATION OF THY NAME. ' * 



FEOUDE'S 
DESCEIPTION OF THE lEISII PEOPLE. 



In his book entitled "The English in Ireland," Mh Froude vents his 
wraih upon the people of Ireland in many passages and many ways. 
Here is one of the pictures he draws of them, and which Mr. Mitchel 
notices in the course of his lecture : 

From a combination of causes — some creditable to t!iem, some other than 
creditable — the Irish Celts possess on their own soil a power greater than 
any other known family of mankind, of assimilating those w^ho venture among 
them ^ to 'their own image. Light-hearted, humorous, imaginative, susceptible 
through the entire range of feeling, from the profoundest pathos to the most 
playful jest, if they possess some real virtues they possess the counterfeits of a 
hundred more. Passionate in everything — passionate in their patriotism, pas- 
sionate in their religion, passionately courageous, passionately loyal and affec- 
tionate — they are without the manliness which will give strength and solidity to 
the sentimental part of their dispositions ; while the surface show is so seductive 
and so winning that only experience of its instability can resist the charm. The 
incompleteness of character is conspicuous in all that they do and have done ; in 
their history, in their practical habits, in their arts, and in then- literature. Their 
lyrical melodies are exquisite, their epic poetry is ridiculous bombast. In the 
lives of their saints there is a wild if fantastic splendor; but they have no secular 
history, for as a nation they have done nothing which posterity will not be 
aiaxious to forget ; and if they have never produced a tolerable drama, it is be-- 
cause imagination cannot outstrip reality. In the annals of ten centuries there is 
not a character, male or female, to be found belonging to them with sufficient 
hardness of texture to be carved into dramatic outline. Their temperaments are 
singularly impressionable, yet the impresion is incapable of taking shape. They 
have little architecture of their own, and the forms introduced from England 
bave been robbed of their grace. Their houses, from cabin to castle, are tbt 



H FF.OdDFS DESCRIKnON OF THE IKI3H PEOPLE. 

most nideous in the -rtOrld. No lines of beauty soften anywhere the forbidding 
narshness of their provincial towns ; nor climbing rose or creeper dresses the 
naked walls of farm house or cottage. The sun never shone on a lovelier countiy 
as nature made it. They have pared its forests to the stump, till it shivers in 
damp and desolation. The perceptions of taste which belong to the higher orders 
k of understanding, are as compiptely absent as truthfulness of spirit is absent, or 
) cleanliness of person and habit. The Irish are the spendthrift sister of the Arian 

i'face. Yet there is notwithstanding a fascinatioo about them in their old land 
and in the sad and strange associations of their singular destiny. They have a 
^ower of attraction which no one who has felt it can withstand. Brave to rash- 
j 'aess, yet so infirm of purpose, that unless they are led by others their bravery if 
aseless to them ; patriots, yet with a history which they must trick with false- 
Jttood to render it tolerable even to themselves ; imaginative and poetical, yet 
enable to boast of one single national work of art ; attached ardently to their coun_ 
try, yet so cultivating it that they are the byword of Europe ; they appeal to 
lympathy in their very weakness ; and they possess and have always possessed 
Bome qualities the moral worth of which it is impossible to overestLoaate, and 
■which are rare in the choicest races of oiankind. 



"FKOUDE, FKOM THE STANDPOINT OF AN 
lEISH PROTESTANT." 



LECTURE BT 



JOHN MITOHEL, 

DELIVERED IN PLYMPTON HALL, NEW YORK, DECEMBER SO, 1873. ' 



Mk. Pkesident of the Libekal Club, and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I have to address you to-niglit upon tlie subject of a very extraor- 
dinary crusade which has lately been made upon this country by a 
most distinguished Enghsh historian. I think, in all the history of 
literatture and of Uterary enterprise, so singular an achievement as this 
has never been heard of or read of. ° I am the more emboldened to 
come here and say what I think of that affair, just for the reason that 
this is a liberal club, and that I am Ukely to be censured or contra- 
verted if I say anything that is liable to such remark. In such an 
audience, whether it be large or small, accustomed 'to weigh and to 
judge of argument, and to let mere rhetoric pass unnoticed, and fly 
away in the wind, I am not likely to carry off anything on my own 
simple announcement of a fact, or of my own view, no matter how 
eloquent soever my own expression of opinion. Now, the crusade 
which Ve have seen lately coinmenced here by Mr. Froude has occu- 
pied the attention of cultivated writer^ in New York so much that I 
don't find it at aU necessary to enter into a description of it. You aU 
know what it was, and I must say that it was an ungracious mission, 
to say the very least, that Mr. Froude took upon himself when he 
came over here, after first writing his book, charged with the contents 
of that book, to discharge them in America — in the American cities 
— aU directed point blank at the social, political, moral standing of the 
whole Irish race. 

Now, in the remarks that I am going to make, I shall certainly not do 
as my respected friend, Father Burke, felt himself obliged to do; I 
shall not make it an ecclesiastical affair; it is not a matter between 
rival creeds, it is a matter of the relations of my native country — 
Ireland — and the larger, wealthier, and more potent country — England. 



56 JOHN j^nTCHEL'S LEGT0EE ON "FR0UDE;S CRUSADE." 

And it is of no consequence, in my mind, whai creed any Irisliman. 
believes or disbelieves; I am not coming to horrify yon and harrow up 
your feelings by any narration of the cruelty, the oppression, the many 
confiscations, and the slaughters that have been perpetrated on my 
country and its inhabitants. Neither mM I have any sort of complaint 
or vitupwation to pour out on the Enghsh nation for all that has 
passed in Ireland. No ! there is not occasion for complaint or vitu- 
peration. But I do mean to tell you that this series of lectures, and 
this book of Mr. Fronde's, bear false witness against my people. 

If I don't convince you of that fact before I sit dovi^n, then I have 
lost my time in coming here to-night. It may be granted for aU 
present piu'poses — and let it be — that the English or the Normans, or 
whoever else the historian pleases, were forced by circiimstances to 
take charge of Ireland. That is his expression. " They were forced 
over to Ireland by circumstances." That having so taken charge, they 
were foi'ced to take all the lands of the island for their own people. 
" Forced" to persecute the rehgion of the country, and transport and flog 
the priests for saying mass. " Forced " to stir up continual insurrections 
in order to help the good work of confiscation. Let all this theory 
stand admitted. The chief aim I have in the present point, which I 
shall make, is to show that this historian has falsified history in order 
to blacken the Irish people, and to lower them in the estimation of this 
nation, which has given them an asylum, and opened a career for their 
industry, which, I trust, they will never disgTace. Taking up this 
history then at the ;^eriod Mr. Froude has elected, and which he calls the 
turning point in the history of Ireland, that is the Cromwehian period, 
and that of the so-called massacre of 1641, which immediately preceded 
Cromwell's coming. Taking that part of the history, I must first give 
some account of the array of witnesses brought forward to estabhsh that 
massacre, and especially of Sir John Temple, of Borlage, of Sir Wil- 
liam Petty, and of the forty folios of deposl'Sions — " sworn depositions " 
— testimonies which, indeed, I did not expect that any Englishman or 
any Orangeman would ever have the temerity to quote again. As IMr. 
Froude, however, who is called the " first of living historians," has 
thought proper to drag to light again the whole hideous romance, and 
has actually come over to America to pom- it into the horrified ears of 
this people, both through his lectures and through the medium of his 
books, I shall now follow him into the revolting details of one period 
of the few years which he has selected as lie turning point. There is 
one thing very observable, both throughout the lectures and the books 
of this Mr. Froude, and to my mind it is somewhat entertaining. It is 
that though Mr. Froude exhibits very dark portraitures of the Irish 
people La general, he kindly excepts us Protestants. He says: "Oh I 
when I call them a generation of reprobates, and traitors, and cut- 
throats, I don't mean you, you Protestants; on the contraiy, you are • 



JOHN MITGHEL'S LECTUEE ON "FEOWDE'S CEUSADE." 57 

noble, Godly element, whicli we Englishmen have introduced to bring 
some order out of the bloody chaos. You are the missioned race." Mr. 
Macaulay, his predecessor, had previously called us the imperial race. 
" We have planted you and we have enabled you to help yourselves to the 
lands and goods of the irreclaimable Popish savages, in order that you 
might hold the fair island in trust for us — Ireland's masters and yours." 
You are our own Protestant boys ! " I pat you on the backs, I exhort 
you not to do the work of the Lord negligently." That is the kind of 
phrase they had in that day. But I am n"ot myself acquainted with any 
Irish Protestant gentleman who is likely to accept this considerate ex- 
ception in our favor. My own friends in Ireland, from boyhood, at 
school and at the university, and in after life, have been generally of 
the opinion that it would be a blessed and a glorious day when the 
last remains of English dominion in their country was swept into the 
seas. 

I never was taught in my youth that the man of two sacraments 
has a natural right and title to take aU the possessions and to take the 
life of the man of seven. My father was not only a Protestant, but a 
Protestant clergyman, and in the year 1798 when only a student in 
college he was sworn in as a United Irishman, and then proceeded to 
swear all his friends into the same society. I am sure you gentle- 
men know what was the noble object of this society ; it was to suppress 
and abolish forever on that soil the dominion of England. Now Henry 
G-rattan was a Protestant, and he was not a very bad Irishman.' 
Henry Grattan did not affirm, but on the contrary, denied the preten- 
sions of England to govern Ireland for her own profit, which is Mi'. 
Fronde's theory. This was the hand that penned the Declaration of 
Irish Independence. This was the hand — the brain — that brought 
together, not the great army of the volunteers, but an immense force to 
make good his Declaration of Independence, and he did make it good 
for eighteen years. Theobald Wolfe Tone was a Protestant, and he 
brought over two successive French expeditions to Ireland, to assist 
the Irish in shaking off British dominion. And Tandy was a Protes- 
tant, and he commanded the artillery of the volunteers, and planted 
his batteries in front of the Parhament, the House of Commons, to ex- 
tort from the English Government free trade for Ireland. Shiel and 
many other patriots were Protestants, and there seems to be no incom- 
patibility between Protestants and Irishmen. But I confess that I felt 
myself a little mortified when this controversy was lately sprung upon 
us, to find that it was treated by both parties in a manner a little too 
ecclesiastical for my tastes. I don't blame Father Burke, because per- ■ 
haps it was forced upon him, a Dominican Monk, in repelling furious 
and bitter assaults upon his church and his order ; it was unavoidable vj 
for him to retort, but it has given the whole of that controversy as it ' 
•tands hitherto a too rehgious aspect. I don't say that in any disparag- 



58 JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTUEE ON " FKOUDE CRUSADE." 

ing or derogatory sense, but it does not meet the case, that is what I 
mean to say. Well, you know when IVIr. Froude takes us Protestants 
in such a conspicuous manner under his charge, and flatters us with 
being the salt of the earth, upon whom England rehes for maintaining 
her power in Ireland. I fear that he is going to have a very ungrate- 
ful set of chents in us. We will not have his advocacy at any price. 
I can imagine that I see William Smith O'Brien receiving the congrat- 
ulations of the historian as a Protestant, and therefore, as a sort of a 
deputy Briton. This revered name of O'Brien I cannot mention with- 
out bowing in homage to that grand memory. He was as good a 
Protestant, at least, as Mr. Froude, the historian, but he spent many 
years of his life in exile and captivity, because he sought to free his 
country by the armed hand from British rule. He and I myself, who 
address you, have broken the bread of exile together, and have drank 
of the cup of captivity with one another in the forests of the antipodes, 
and he never to my knowledge, to the latest hour of his hfe, repented 
the part he took in trying to stir up his people — Cathohcor Protestant, 
he did not care which — to stir them up to one manly, vigorous effort to 
throw off English dominion. 

It would be easy, of course, to enlarge upon this affair of jMr. ■ 
Froude's Protestant chents, but I wiU drop that. One of them is 
Mr. Prendergast, the author of " The CromweUian Settlement of Ire- 
land." It is not a very large voltime, and is one of the most perfect 
.works of art, as a historical composition, I have ever seen. It treats, 
as the title imphes, of that particular portion of our history, and IVIr. 
Froude himself takes occasion to pay a very high compliment to Mr. 
Prendergast, although he is not in the habit of paying comphments. 
But he could scarcely help it on this occasion, because 'Mi: Prendergast 
being much more familiar with the archives and Eecord Office than 
ever he was or ever \^ be, was of great use to him in procuring 
authorities for his books. He therefore takes occasion, and I marked 
it down to read you that sentence, in order that the book of IMi'. Pren- 
dergast may become better known as having the veiy high and irref- 
ragable attestation of IVIr. Froude. He says : "I cannot pass from thia 
part of my narration without making my acknowledgements to Mr. Pren- 
dergast, to whose personal courtesy I am deeply indebted, and for whose 
impartiahty and candor in this book, in this volume of the CromweUian 
Settlement, I cannot offer to-night better praise than by saying that 
the conclusions which ho has ari'ived at and my own are precisely the- 
very opposite. He wiites as an Irish patriot, and I as an Englishman ; 
the difiference between us is not of the facts, but the opinion to be 
formed about them." 

Mr. Prendergast wi'ites relative to the transplantation of the people 
of the thi'ee provinces out of four in Ireland. Their transplantation 
was into the proviac^ of Connaught, which was a land of lakes, wastes. 



JOHN SHTCHEL'S LECTURE ON "FAoUDE'S CETJSADE." 59 

black morass and mountains. The difference of opinion to be formed 
of that transaction appears, as Mr. Prendergast thought it was, a hard 
measure, and Mr. Froude thinks it was a wise and prudent arrange- 
ment, intended for the good of the Irish race. 

Now, the amusing part of this relation that exists between Mr. 
Prendergast and Mr. Froude is, that since the publication of that book 
Mr. Prendergast, seeing that he was highly, complimented by a yery 
eminent historian, who is very acceptable to many thousands of readers* 
Mr. Prendergast, who might have felt flattered and soothed by so 
handsome a mention, suddenly flies out into a passion of rage. He 
writes to the Dublin journals, and says : " It is true I did give him in- 
formation. I cud give him references to the authorities. Sometimes 
through other persons and" sometimes directly to himself." Then Mr. 
Prendergast goes on to say, that on one occasion, where they were at a 
loss for some authorities on a point vfhich was likely to involve a good 
deal of difference of opinion, he found the authorities, and communi- 
cated them to Mr. Froude. He says: "I met him at the College 
Library, and told him I had found what was wanted, and referred him 
to it," describing it. But he goes on: " I saw well enough from the 
demeanor of the man, his expression, that he was going to misdeal 
with it in some way or other." Absolutely he says that in print now. 
So what does he do ? He goes and pubhshes it in the Dublin papers, 
the best evidence to nail the fact that he thought IMr. Froude would 
otherwise misdeal with it. 

Now, I shall not have time nor space in one lecture to enter upon 
that particular question he has raised, I only mention it to show you 
how another of Mr. Fronde's clients takes his patronage, for it hap- 
pens that Mr. Prendergast is a Protestant. 

••Well, nowj to come to that insurrection of 1641. Undoubtedly there 
was an insurrection. It commenced in the province of Ulster, and it 
broke out suddenly on the 23d of October in that year — more than 200 
years ago — and the whole plan and purpose of it, as admitted by the 
worst enemies of the Irish nation, was to retake and to possess the 
farms and the houses which had been forcibly taken away from the 
Irish of Ulster. At the very most but from twenty, years to thirty 
years had elapsed since the people of these counties had been driven 
to mountains and bogs, that their pleasant fields might be granted to 
Scotch and English settlers. Most of the Irish people were still living 
bj or near the fields they had lost. They could see them ; from the 
brow of the hills, where they generally had to fly for shelter, they could 
see the fields they had tilled, now tilled by the strangfer; they could see 
the yellow corn falling beneath the sickle of the stranger; they could 
see the smoke from their own chimney rising up from tj/ie stranger's hearth. 
Now, was not that a provoking sight? That they frequently toade 
incursions; that they frequently violated what the English called 



60 JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON "FROUDE'S CRUSADE.'* 

law, and broke the peace; that they became "Tories" (which 
was a poHtical term in those days) and Rapparees, was ine- 
vitable. The best of them— the most high spii'ited of the yonng 
inen — went to France and Spain to take service in those armies, or in 
any other army where they might have a chance to strike a good blow 
at England on any field. But most of them were still on the hill sides, 
and in the bogs and scrub forests of Ulster. Their case was, when they 
were charged with those troublesome incursions on the lowland settlers, 
very similar to that of the Highland cateraus, their kinsmen, who 
often made a swoop down from theii' hills upon the valley of the Clyde 
or the Forth, and carried away herds of cattle. As on^ of them said to 
one who remonstrated with him on the illegality of his proceedings: 

"Pent in tbis fortress of the North, 
Thiuk'st tliou we shall not issue forth, 
To spoil the spoiler as we may, 
And from the robber rend the prey ? 
Aye ! by mj soul, while on yon plain 
The Saxon rears one strock of grain, 
While, of ten thousand herds, there strays 
But one along yon river's maze, 
The Gael, of plain and river heir, 
Will, with strong hand, redeem his share." 

Now, the feeling was the same, and yet it was more excusable in the 
Iiish evicted peasant than it was in the Highlanders. Those High- 
landers had lost their rich fields for ages and generations, but^tho 
Irish, as I told you, could look down from their hills and see their own 
•houses and their own cattle, or the produce and increase of their own 
cattle, browsing on their own fields. So that it is not very wonderful, 
after the confiscation of six counties in the time of James I., the Irish, 
after waiting many years to see whether some good might not come to 
them from comphcations in politics in England, after waiting rmtil 
another reign — that of King Charles I — at last, finding that King 
Charles and his parHament were coming to blows, it is no wonder they 
thought they would take a hand in. But, as I say, the intention was — 
and I will be able to show you that the execution was the same — 
simply to repossess of the land which they had, and which could very 
easily identify iJy meter and bounds at that time. 

To give you some httle idea of their provocations, let me mention 
this: There had been but lately presented to the English parhament a 
proposition by divers gentlemen, citizens and others, " for the speedy 
and effectual reducing of the kingdom of Ii'eland." It is a kingdoAi 
that always needs "reducing." First, " They do compute that less than 
a million of money will- do that woi'k;" secondly, "They do conceive 
that, the work bekig finished, tl^ere will be enough of confiscated land 
in the country, under the name of profitable land, to amount to tea 
millions of acres, Enghsh measure." Now the whole of Ireland is ex- 
actly the size of the State of South Carolina; yet they want ten mil- 



JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON "FROUDE'S CRUSiJDE." 61 

lions of acres for Englishmen. Two millions and a half of these acres 
to be taken out of four provinces wiU sufficiently satisfy them, to be di- 
vided among them, as foUows, namely: To such an adveiaturer a 
thousand acres in Connaught, &c., in proportion to the share he con- 
tributed to the fund, and this was to consist of meadow and arable or 
pasture land; the woods, bogs and barren mountains coming in over 
and above. And the act was passed, and the gentlemen adventurers 
put in their money, and these gentlemen adventurers did actually 
come, for a short time, to become proprietors of a. great part of 
Ireland. 

I may meution this on the authority of Dr. Leland, the historian of 
Ireland and a Protestant clergyman,' He says: 

" The future hope of the Irish colonists and the English Parliament 
was the utter extermination of the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. 
Their estates were already marked out and allotted to their conquerors; 
So they and all their posterity were consigned to inevitable ruin." 

Carte says in a letter to the Lord Lieutenant : 

" The event was most disastrous. They hoped for the extirpation 
ijot only of the mere Irish, but of the old English families that were 
Roman Catholics. Whatever were the professions of the chief gover- 
nors, the only danger that they apprehended was the too speedy sup- 
pression of the Rebels." 

All Irishmen were called Rebels at that time. 

"Well, that has given you no details, nor shall I now take time to do 
so, of what they suffered in the matter of religion. I will only read 
you one extract. On January 3lst, 1629, more than ten years before 
the Rebellion, a letter was sent to the Lords Justices and Counsellors 
of Ireland from the Government. An extract from it reads : " Foz 
where such people are permitted totswarra," that is to sayjfriarBj'inonbi 
and priests, " they will soon make their hives, and then endure no gov- 
ernment but their own ; who cannot be otherwise restrained, except by 
a prompt and seasonable execution of the laws, and such is the direc- 
tion to the people, from time to time, that is sent from His Majesty in 
this part." And such messages as these to his officers : " If any shall 
be discovered openly or underhandedly favoring such offenders, to take 
all neces^y and sufficient advantages by the punishment and disci- 
pline of the few to make the rest more cautious, and thus we write to 
assure you of our assistance on all such occasions. We have advised 
His Majesty and require you to take order : first, of the house where so 
many friars appeared in their hoodsj wherein the Archbishop of Dublin 
[a Protestant Archbishop] and the Mayor of Dublin received their first 
affront, and to speedily demolish it, to make it a terror to ethers ; and 
the rest of the ho'ieefc erected or employed elsewhere in Ireknd for the 



©2 JOHN ^nTGHEL'S LECTURE ON "FSOUDE'S CRUSADE." 

nse of superstition to be turned into Houses of Correction for such 
idle people to work for the advancement of justice, good art and 
trade." 

At that same time, before these people were stiiTed up to insurrec- 
tion, the laws required all men to attend the Established Church of 
England, on pain of £20 sterling penalty a month. It was no small 
sum. But, if in addition to that, if any man should be convicted of 
harboring or relieving a person who did not go to church, that person, 
"was to pay another fine of iElO sterling a month for so long as he har- 
bored or reheved him. In certain cases, if a man's father or mother 
were extremely poor and had no other place to go, the man was 
allowed to harbor an'd to relieve his own father and mother ; but if 
they had any place to go, any means of living, he was in for the fine. 
So at that time a poor Irishman might harbor a bui'glar or a mur- 
derer, he might relieve any cut-throat or rick-burner, but to harbor or 
relieve his father or mother involved him in ruin. 

Now, the writers that form really all the authority upon this subject 
are the writers on whom I exclusively, and Mr. Froude in a degree* 
relies, are Carte, who wrote this book of the "Life of the Duke of Or" 
monde ;" Sir John Temple, Master of the KoUs ; the Rev. Ferdinand 
Warner, and Dr. Leland. And these very men have given us the^ 
several testimonies. 

Carte says : 

" Their first intentions, these insurgents, is not further than to strip 
the English Protestants of their power and possessions ; and, unless . 
forced to by opposition, not to shed any blood," Temple, the bitterest 
enemy of all, says : " It was resolved by the insurgents not to kill any 
unless where they, of necessity, were forced thereunto by opposition." 
Warner says : " Resistance produced some bloodshed, and in ^ome in- 
stances private revenge, religious hatred, and the suspicion of some 
political concealment has enraged the rebels. So far, the other was the 
original scheme first pursued, and few fell by the sword except in open 
war and assault." 

So I think those who have studied that time with some degree of care 
remember that few or none ever fell by the sword, or none except by 
war and open assault until a certain day. The leading deponent who 
filled up those forty folios, as Mr. Froude calls them — but^here was 
only thirty-four, in Trinity College — the leading deponent is a certain 
Dr. Maxwell, who then lived in a little village called Tyrian, in the 
County of Armagh. It is on his deposition that most of the forfeitures 
in all Ulster were made^ and it is to him that Mi'. Froude refers as 
bearing out the terrible picture he has given of the massacre, as he calls 
it. Let me give you some notion of some soi-t of the swearing that 
took place. He has given you an extract or two from Dean Maxwell's 



JOHN MITOHEL'S LECTUEE ON "FKOUDE'S CRUSADE." 63 

affidavit. But first bear in mind that the Dean, who was a very am. 
bitious divine, desired to rise in his profession. Ire, in fact, was a cor- 
rupt and bigoted divine, who actually became bishop for this affidavit 
— the ^Bishop of Kilmore. "The deponent saith that the rebels them, 
selves told him." Note that form of expression. What were the re- 
presentations of the rebels ? Had they no name ? What chance had 
they to come to the Dean of Tyrian and tell him — the rebels them- 
selves ? " They told him that they murdered 954 in oiae mo^-ning in -the 
County Antrim, and besides them they killed 1,100 or 1,200 more in 
that county. They told him, likewise, that Colonel Brian O'Neill killed 
about 1,000 in the County Down and -300 near Kilroe, besides inany 
hundreds both before and after in these countjes ; that he heard Sir 
Phelim likewise report that he killed about GOO Englishmen at Garva 
in the County Derry." 

Try ii the human mind can imagine the killing of 600 Englishmen, 
and Sir Phelim coming to Dean Maxwell at TjTian to tell him what he 
had done, and that he had neither left man, woman or child in Tyrone, 
Armagh, Newry, and so on. " He saith also that there were above 2,000 
of the British murdered for the most part in their houses, whereof he 
•was informed by a Scotchman." 

This Dean swears on the Holy Evangelists that 2,000 British, who 
had no names, were inurdered, whereof he was informed by a Scotch- 
man, who was in these parts and saw their houses filled witb their dead 
people. ' In the glenwood were slaughtered, said the Rebels, &nd told 
the deponent, " upwards of 12,000 in all.'" Why, there were not.the half 
of 12,000 Protestants in all that County of Down, taking in the 
women and children. 

Arthur. Culver of Cloughwater, in the County of Cavan, esquire, de- 
poseth — " That he was credibly informed, by some that were present 
there that there were thirty women and young children, and seven men 
flung into the river of Belturberet ; and when some of them offered to 
swim for their lives, they were by the i-ebels followed in boats and 
knocked on the head with poles ; the same day they hangtd two women 
at Tubert ; and this deponent doth verily believe that Mulmore O'Rely, 
the then Sheriff, had a hand in the commanding the murder of those 
said persons, for that he saw him write two notes, which he sent to 
Tubert, by Brian O'Reily, upon whose coming these murders were 
committed ; and those persons Avho were present also affirmed that the 
bodies of those 30 persons drowned did not appear upon the water till 
about 6 weeks after past ; as the said O'Rely came to the town, all 
the bodies came floating up to the very bridge ; those persons were all 
formerly stayed in the town by his protection, when the rest of then 
neighbors in the town went away." 

Now let me read for you other extracts or morceau — 

The Examination of Dame Butler; who being duly sworn, deposeU 



64 JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON "FROU»E'S CRUSADE." 

that " she was credibly iafoi-meci by Dorothy Renals, who had been 
several times an ejp-witness of these lamentable spectacles, that she 
had seen to the number of five-and-thirty English going to execution ; 
and that she had seen them when they were executed, their bodies ex- 
posed to devouring ravens, and not afiorded as much as burial." 

And this deponent saith " that Sir Edward Butler did credibly 
inform her, that James Butler of Finyhinch, had hanged and put to 
death all the English that were at Goran and Wells and all there- 
abouts ! " 

" Jane Jones, servant to the deponent; did see the English formerly 
Sj)ecified going to their execution ; and, as §he conceived, they were 
about the number of thirty-five, and was told by Elizabeth Home that 
there were forty gone to execution," 

Thomas Fleetwood, late curate *of Kilbeggan, in the County West. 
meath, " deposeth, that he had heard from the mouths of the rebels them- 
selves of great criielties acted by them. And, for one instance, that 
they stabbed the mother, one Jane Addis by name, and left her little 
Buckling child, not a quarter old, by the corpse, and then they put the 
breast of its dead mother into its mouth and bid it ' suck English bas- 
tard !' and so left it there to perish." 

" Richard Burke, Batchelor in Divinity of the County Fermanagh, de" 
poseth that he heard and verily believeth of the burning and killing 
of one hundred at least in the Castle of Tullagh,'and that the same was 
done after fair quarter had been promised." 
■ " Elizabeth Baskerville deposeth that she heard the wife ot Florence 
Fitzpatrick find qiuch fault with her husband's soldiers because they did 
not bring her the grease of Mr. Nicholson, whom they had slain, for her 
to make candles withal." 

It would weary you if I were to repeat all that "■ the deponent verily 
believes !" or has heard somebody tell that the rebels have done. There 
(S much that 1 could not read in this or indeed in any assembly. But 
the shameful part of this matter is that Mr. Froude cites nearly all these 
things that I have now read to you those except the ghosts, as matter of 
fact. He refers in general terms to those great folios of papers as " the 
eternal witness of blood " — fine language he always uses — " which tha 
Irish Catholics have been striving ever since to wipe away." Go 
through that eternal witness, and you will find these things I have reflid 
to you. He absolutely cites them here ! 

" Some were driven into the rivere and drowned, some hanged, some 
mutilated, some ripjjed with knives ; the priests told the people that the 
Protestants werc worse tlian dogs — they were devils and served the 
de\il, and the killing of them was a meritorious act. One wretch, as he 
i^ credibly informed," " stabbed a woman with a baby in her arms, and 



JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTimfi ON " FEOUDE'S CBXJSADE." 63 

I 
left the infant in mockery on its dead mother's breast, bidding it * suck 

English bastard.'" 
I He does not in the whole of his account give the slightest hints that 
i anybody has objected to the authenticity of these evidences, or that any- 
' body ever doubted that these persons ever did really take these oaths, or 
that those oaths are not all relied upon as historical authorities. 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a very sad and dreadful thing to think 
of, that they founded upon such ignominious trash, — such monstrous 
masses of foohsh balderdash and infamous perjury, — laws that might 
confiscate the estates of almost all the gentlemen in Ireland ; and these 
estates were handed over to the adventurers that had already sub- 
scribed and put in their contributions, and to the soldiers of Oliver 
CromweU. 

All was done with the utmost piety. That was the rule in those 
(days. Mr. Prendergast, in his excellent book gives a good many ex- 
amples of the astonishing piety and virtue of Sir WHliam Petty, the 
Surveyor for Cromwell's ai'my, and the other people, who were concerned 
in the usual exercise of setting out the lands and estates that were 
confi.<v?ated, and in driving their inhabitants acr£)ss the Shannon into 
the mountains of Connaught. " They sought the Lord always with 
strong crying and tears that He would send a blessing ujjon the great 
work that they were achieving ; they cried out that the infant was al- 
. most come to the birth, but there was no strength to bring forth, unless 
the Lord helped." 

In one way or another they got the whole population, except the 
merest laborers and plowmen, out of the country into Connaught, and 
gave t'heir lands to the soldiers and officers of Cromwell's army. 

Now all that is done ; it is over. There is nobody now talking of 
unsettling the settlement of property which now exists there. In aU 
the discussions about the Irish National questions that are constantly 
disturbing society there, nobody is daring enough to propose that 
there should be a new confiscation to make things straight after two 
hundred years of quiet enjoyment. They just seek nothing in this 
world but the legislative independence of their country, and then each 
man to have the opportunity of doing the best he can to advance him- 
self in life, and to contribute his share to the enriching and the 
governing of his native land 

I think it must have cost an effort to any man with the accomplish- 
ments and talents of Mr. Froude to come over here to endeavor to in- 
culcate upon Americans such a dreadful impression of the national 
ehai*acter of a peoJ)le, that form now so large a portion of our popula- 
tion. Why should he do it ? What harm had they ever done to bim ? 
Not only no harm, but he himself acknowledges somewhere, that when 
he was taken by nearly a mortal sickness in his youth, he was taken 
care of by.a poor family of peasants in the County of Mayo. They 



60 JOHN mTCHEL'g LECTTJRE ON " FROUDE'S CRUSADE." 

took such tender care of him as only Irish women know how ; and 
never from that day t© this has he received cause of quarrel or com- 
plaint from any Irish man or woman that I ever heard of. 
« 

IVjiy .should he tell you "Ydu oughf to hate them ? " — for tie does that 
ill so many words in his book; that you ought not to tolerate their 
•j-'ligion, and that no government ought to tolerate it, but repress it by 
ip'ains and penalties. He says, "No Government need keej) terms 
^ith such a creed [meaning the Catholic], when there is power to 
abolish it; and to call the repression by England o'f a religion which has 
issued so many times in blood and revolt, by the name of persecution, 
is merely an abuse of words." What I ask your attention to is that 
phrase of his, " No Government ought to tolerate it, and every Gov- 
ernment ought to repress it by pains and penalties." What does he 
mean by that ? When England seeks to force her opinion on other 
men, and the other men with their own opinion resist the force, now 
which of the two opinians causes the revolt and blood ? 

Now another thing I have to complain ot in Mr. Froude. He quotes 
the work of Sir John Temple, who gives extracts of those depositions; 
but besides that he gives a very considerable account of himself and of 
the miseries and slaughters that fell on Ireland in those daysk Mr. 
Froude never hints that Temple is not good authority. He never seems 
to have the fear of anybody coming at him, " the great histroian " to 
accuse him of palming ofl" on them bad authority. N ow he knows that this 
same Sir John Temple not only had the very strongest interest in estab- 
lishing the trutiiof that massacre, but. also in making it as bad as poa- 
sible, because he was one of the adventurers himself; had paid his sub- 
scription and could not get his money back unless the massacre was 
established. But after his term was served he endeavored to sup- 
press that book, and to stop its circulation. Either he was ashamed of 
it, or else, what is more probable, he thought it would not do him any 
more good after King Charles II. had, come back after tffo restoration. 
Lord Essex then was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in a letter of his 
which is j^ublished, soliciting for a handsome annuity to Sir John Tem- 
ple, for some service he supposed him to have performed, he takes 
occasion, on the part of Sir John Temple, to contradict the fact that he 
ever allowed a second edition of that work to be published, and informed 
the Government that Sir John Temple absolutely denied that he ever 
gave tlie booksellers permission to print a second edition. Neverthe- 
less it was reprinted several times, and I am the fortunate possessor of 
a copy. I should be very glad indeed if some enterprising publisher 
would reprint it and send it along with Mr. Fronde's, history, for every- 
body to read. But what I complain of is, Mr. Froude knows that 
Essex had made that disclaimer on tht- part of Temple, for it is in the 
well known collection of the " Letters of the Earl of Essex," in twc 



JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON "FROUDE'S CRUSADE." 6* 

quarto volumes, which collection is laiown to Mr. Froudo, and mtist "be 
in all the iDublic libraries of all the English-speaking nations. i 

Now, not to detain you too long, I only want to say that it is here 
that my quarrel with Mr. Froude is, — that he has come over here to 
misrepresent the Protestants of Ireland. We can not take him as a 
representative of the Protestants. I do not know that he is a Christian 
at all. My impression is, that the seven sacraments and the two sacra- 
ments in his eyes are all one. But what I do say is that we cannot ! 
take his advocacy of establishing our right and. title in Iceland on that 
" superior " ground. We want no superior ground. We want to live 
in good fellowship *nd good neighborhood with the Catholic people 
around, us. We want to see some reparation made for the long centu- 
ries of rapine and slaughter that have been inflicted upon us. ' In fact, ; 
I believe my task has been almost taken away from me ; and my 
effort has been rendered needless before I came here, by the very extra- 
ordinary lecture lately delivered by Mr. Wendell Phillips. A most 
generous and 'noble speech was that of Mr. Phillips, and I confess some 
surprise at finding that this gentleman had flung himself so heartily on 
the side of the weak- against the strong, and had taken the Irish side 
against the English. I could not end. without paying my tribute to- 
Yf endell Phillips for that speech, and I thank you for the kindnes.s 
with which you have listened to me so far. ^ . i 

The President then announced that, in accordance with the custom 
of the club, the members would now discuss the subject of the lecture 
in speeches of ten minutes' duration, after which the lecturer of the 
evening would close with a few remarks. 

The discussion was opened by Dr. Halleck in a brief and very empha- 
tic address. Dr. Halleck asserted that the question between Ireland 
and England was entirely a religious question, and that the Irish Catho- 
lics were governed absolutely by the Pope of Rome. 

Professor Wilcox followed. He gave 'it as his opinion that Mr. 
Froude had entirely mistaken the spirit of his own countrymen. He 
said that England recognized the necessity of the age, and that he con- 
sidered she would be willing to grant the independence of Ireland. He 
agreed with Father Burke that a peaceful policy would be best for 
Ireland to pursue, and cited the instance given by Wendell Phillipa in 
his lecture on the great O'ConneU, when the first of Irish orators and 
statesmen held the Whig party in one hand and the Tory party in the 
other, deciding to which he should give the government of England. 
Since that policy had been unfortunately abandoned no good resulti 
have been attained. 

Mr. Andrew H. Devine replied to the assertions of Mr. Halleck by- 
giving them a fiat denial, and defied the Doctor to produce his proo^ 
"unless," he said, "it was obtained from the veracious articles oi 
Eugene Lawrence in Harper's Weeldy." 



. 68 JOHN MTTCHEL'S LECTT7EE ON «rEOUDE'S CStJSADE." 

o'donovan rossa's remarks. 

In response to the request of the chairman, Mr. O'Donovan Boasa 
then addressed the assembly as follows : 

" I did not expect, ladies and gentlemen, that you would call upon 
me^ and I did not come prepai'ed to speak; but as you have called upon 
me to address you, I will say a few words. My friend, Dr. Halleck, has, 
to my mind, given us a very fair specimen of what a Hberal club ought 
to be, and in the little spicy debate that followed, my friend. Professor 
Wilcox, said that I would differ from him. He has his opinion and I 
have mine. Dr. Halleck has talked about the Pope, and about us Irish 
people being subject to the Pope, but, as Mr. Devine has so well said, 
any one who knows history knows that for 400 years after England in- 
troduced her people into Ireland, England and Ireland were both Catho- 
lic, and that England governed Ireland as mercilessly then as she has 
since she became Protestant. The question between England and Ire- 
land was never a religious question ifi that day, but, since the Reform- 
ation, England has done all that she could to show the woi'ld that it was 
on account of religion that Ireland had such an antagonism to her 
government of the country. In regard to what is called the massacre 
of 1641, bigoted historians may have succeeded, even in Ireland, in giv- 
ing the matter a religious complexion ; but those who know of Ire- 
land's ruin under that government before the Reformation, before the 
Protestant religion was ever introduced in England, well know how 
litjle need there was of the new agency of religious hatred. But when 
the Reformation was introduced in England, why, the Irish, according 
to the story they invented, rose because the Protestant religion came 
over with Englishmen. Such is the explanation which Froude and 
other prejudiced historians find in looking over our history, and endeav- 
oring to give the whole fight a religious complexion ; though it has 
been clearly shown that the I'eal fight was not again s^Protestanism, 
but against the English who had plundered the Irish of their posses- 
sions. 

My friend, Dr. Halleck, has talked of the infallibility of the Pope of 
Rome, but I thought he would be about as fair a specimen of infallibility in 
hia opinion, if he were to be Pope, as any man I have overseen, and I 
doubt even now whether he does not consider himself infallible. lie haa 
alluded to a question — which I did not like to see raised — between North 
and South, and said something in regard to Mr. Mitchel's position. 
In regard to the question of an Irishman's taking the part of the South, 
although O'Connell did not, I need only remind you l>hat many men ia 
the North, and many distinguished Americans, favored the Southern 
cause. 

j I don't want to go into the question, but I should like to ask th« 
gentleman, if his parents were Catholic, and he had been brought apin 



JOHN MITCHEL'S LEGTUEE ON "FROUDE'S CRUSADE." 69 

that faith, at what period of his life he woulal see the errors of Catholicity 
and become what he is now ? I took a note of what he said, because 
I thought it was a very curious Idnd of speech from a liberal man. 

Professor Wilcox has mentioned my name, and spoke of tlie folly of 
trying to free Ireland by the armed hand, but only for the arnfed hand 
I don't know what we would be here to-day. Perhaps E-ngland would 
think that America was beWeen her and India, and she would insist on 
having facilities for her exportation an^ controlling the commerce she 
got from this country. 

There is one analogous case in regard to. the question of inti^'oducing 
religion into politics. Supposing that when (Jur ancestors came here — 
I may say our ancestors, as everybody here must be descended 
from the Puritans — when they came here there were a people with a 
very strong know-nothing spirit in the country ; the^'C were a people 
here who were jealous of any others coining to the country, and they 
met these Puritans and tried to scalp them. Now if these Indians had 
only one name to express the words Puritan and Englishman, a^d Mi*. 
Froude should write down in his book that all these Puritans were 
massacred because they were Puritans, and it waj on account of their 
religion that the Indians scalped them, this is just analogous to the 
case of the war between Ireland and England. The Irish had but one 
name — " Sassenagh " — for both the Engli*shman and the Protestant. I 
trust that in America a better spirit prevails between the people of what- 
ever nationality. I think, at least, that this country is one of the 
brightest places in the world, and those who are here have littl© need to 
be jealous of those who come to aid them in developing its resources.- 
' I will offer you no more reftiarks, ladies and gentlemen. I have pe- 
culiar notions of my own,(|)erhaps. I believe in the independence of my 
native land, and I believe that independence must be won and estab" 
lished by the armed hand. It is true war is a terrible alternative, and 
one that I would avoid if it were .possible ; but then it is a gloAous 
alternative when it succeeds in gaining independence for the people 
who take up the sword. I am not one of those who would .prefer it, but 
I believe it is the only way to make England reasonable or just with us 
The sympathy of Americans is much to be desix'ed, but I believe that 
when we have proved ourselves worthy, and not till thdn, shall we gain 
the blessing of national liberty. ' 

Mr. Mitchell was then called for and responded as follows : 
MB. Mitchell's concluding kemakks. 

I can scarcely say, Mr. Preeident, that there is any discussion exist- 
ing now before you, or that there is anything left for me to say. I had 
not intended, nor did I at all attempt, to go into the whole question of 
the relation between Ireland and England. I did not undertake to 
give you a catalogue of the social and political oppressions that have 



VO JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON <' FROUDE'S CEUSADR" 

made Ireland what she is to-day — the beggarliest country on the face 
of the earth. That system has been entered into by one or two of the 
speakers at some length, and I am glad that my lecture, or rather the 
title of my discourse, gave rise to some discussions which were as cn- 
tertainiaej as instructive. My friend, Professor "Wilcox, cautions us 
with great earnestness against the use of violence in attempting to re- 
Vover the independence of our country. H& must be greatly ashamed 
")f George Washington. [Professor "Wilcox : "I think George was 
irrong."] (Laughter.) Very well. I will leave that part of tlie dis- 
cussion right there. George was wrong and Mr. "Wilcox is right. (Re-' 
newed laughter.) But oq the question IMr. "Wilcox opened in that 
Tay, viz.: what course of procedure we Irish shall take in gainirg our 
.rights.^ I did not come here to-night to announce that com'se of pro- 
cedure, for we will take such course as seems to us best calculated to 
affect our object, and the American pubHc is not by any means appoiiled 
to in regard to our futm-e course. If we obey the laws of the "ULitod 
'l^tates, that is aU you can ask of us. Therefore I shaU not go further into 
lyhftt may be judged proper by certain naturalized or unnaturalittJ 
.Erish- Americans in case of a struggle between L'eland and England, 
The other gentleman, who says he is a sociahst, has also opened more 
laew subjects, and into these I will not enter; but I feel greatly obligee! 
to Mr. Devine, one of the speakers, for coming in as he did and rebuk- 
ing the attempt to import some religious venom into this discus- 
sion, and for overthrowing completely the statement that Catholics owe 
obedience and allegiance t® the Pope of Rome. The speaker who said 
that had tio right to say it, and no authority to support it, and where 
he foimd such authority, if it was not in Hamper's Weekly, I cannot con- 
ceive. As to the other remarks of that same gentleman, sir, who sits 
at your right hand, (referring to Dr. Halleck,) he brought things into 
ij^s discussion that I did not know were called for, and in fact I did 
not very well understand, for I am not quite soi'e I followed him; but 
I believe there was something about my plantation in Alabama, which 
I think had nothing to do with the matter now in hand, and he told as 
a fact that I had gone down somewhere — where I don't know — and 
made a certain statement. I shall not answer it, for I thiuk it has no 
relation to the case, is evidently and obviously irrelevant, and, ii5 me 
Btriete^ sense of the W(frd, impertinent. 

In regard to the case against IMr. Froude as a historian — even thai 
case is very far from being exhausted. Mr. Meline, a citizen of Brook- 
lyn, has gone though a large portion of the long indictment which re- 
saains against Mr. Froude, and to which he disdains to plead, because 
Ug cannot plead not guilty. But it would have been too long to enter , 
O^)0n, and the only distinct subject that I proposed to myself to con 
•ider to<night before you was the imfaithfulness of Mr. Froude in pre- 
senting authorities that he knew were false and worthless, grounding 



JOB.^ MITCHEL'S 'LECTURE ON " FROUDE'S CRUSADE." 71 

my view apon the evidences he himself selected. Even as to that part 
of the cajo, I had not time to go through them all. I might have told 
you a grt at deal more. For example, he adopts the lov7 estimate of 
the " massacre" which was given by Sir William Petty-=— that is to say 
38,000 within two months ; a large reduction from the 154,000 of the 
other authority, but Petty knew more about the statistics of the coun- 
try. Dr. Petty, afterwards Sir "William, was one of the largest pro- 
prietors created by the settlement under Cromwell. He ended by hav- 
ing in his possession £200,000 worth of land in the County Kerry alone 
— a million pounds sterling of our money now. 

He began hfe in a very humble manner, and made out his education 
as he best could. He was a boy when the massacre took place, he had 
never been in Ireland in his life, and it was ten years after when he 
same over for the first time in the wake of Cromwell's army. Being 
■very clever in surveying, he got the appointment of surveyor general, 
a^nd laid off the land assigned to- the soldiers and the officers of Crom- 
well's army. He made himself immensly rich and was the greatest 
" Carpet-bagger " of his century. Now to this man it was an absolute 
necessity that that massacre should be estabhshed. It was a necessi- 
ty for him, because it was the very title by which he held his land. 
It was that massacre which brought on confiscation, and confiscation 
gave him his fortune. He could not afford to let go his hold upon it — 
it was impossible for him to afford to live without that massacre. If 
•any one had denied it within that century, they would have had his 
heart's blood. !^ow the folly of Mr. Froude is in putting forward the 
authority of Petty to prove the case of this massacre of even- 38,0001 
He denied the statement of Waring, 2,100 ; — Waring is a very poor 
kind of Protestant. The next account to that would put tke numb# 
of the massacred down to nothing at all, which in fact would be the 
true estimate. There was a war, and a great many were killed, ten 
years after Cromwell landed, but none had yet suffered by massa- 
cre. Petty was on one occasion accused by Jerome Sanquey, a mem- 
ber of Parlaiment, and another carpet bagger, of unfair dealings in the 
matter of the lands of Limerick. He in fact had possession of them for 
himself and his friends, and injured in that way the prospects of his 
brother adventurers. Petty replied in a not very soothing manner, 
and thereupon Sir Jerome Sanquey challenged him. . Now in early 
hfe and for a great part of his youth, Sir Wilham Petty had been a 
very skilful carpenter, so, having the choice of weapons, what do you 
think he chose ? carpenter's adzes in a dark cellar ! Suppose you 
should have a quarrel with a mate of a whahng ship and he should 
chaUange you to fight him with harpoons, the duel to be fought in 
boats on the open sea ? It is hkely that your friends would not permit 
you to accept that challange. But Sir William Petty, who was certainly 
oae of the ablest and cleverest men of that day, is, from these facts the 



72 JOHN MITCHEL'S LHCTURE ON "FROUDE'S CRUSADE." 

very worst conceivable authority for anyihing of which he had his part, 
Mr. Frouclc in one of his remarks about the Irish, condemning them 
for not having good taste or feeling, or even cleanliness, says that they 
don't know what to do with their country, and that they have " pared 
its forests to the stumps." Now Mr Froude knows — if he knows any- 
thing at all, — which seems to be a matter of doubt — he knows, for ke 
has hved in Kerry, that Sir Wilham Petty pared to the stumps aU the 
forests of Kerry; and he knew, though he would not tell, why it waa 
done. If he could not fell Sir Jerome Sanquey, he could at least fell 
down the trees of Kerry, for in his day Kerry, with its beautiful views 
and lakes, was shaded by ancient and magnificent forests of timber, 
and to-day they are indeed shaved to the stump. Sir "William Petty 
erected iron furnaees there, and fed them with these trees. 

Forty years after, at least, Dean Swift, having occasion to write o^ 
that country, said there was no wood left to use in house or shipbuild- 
ing, and that its forests had been " pared to the stump." Why did he 
cut down those forests ? Mr. Froude knows", but he would never say. 
He cut them down because it was a time when landed estate was a very 
precarious matter in Ireland. There were the elements of confiscation, 
revolution and rebellion at work, and no man who got possession of an 
estate knew how long he would have it, or if he would enjoy it for a 
yeai-. One thing he could do, and that was to cut down eveiy tree, an<3 
as there was an immense demand for them, to sell them. 

On one side there was massacre and continual massacre. I could not 
go back. It would make the hair stand on end upon your heads to read 
of them — of the burnings, and ravishings, and slaughter of men, women 
and children. But I will tell you one little incident in that history. 
• There is a little peninsula called Island McGee, which runs into the 
sea from Belfast Lough — a very fertile and rich piece of ground, which 
rises gradually towards the east to the sea, and then sinks down to it 
in a precipice 400 feet high — more than double the height of Tiinity 
Church. It is trap rock, and the top actually overlays the base for a 
couple of miles along the shore. There were perhaps two thousand 
persons living there, and a number of others are said to have taken 
refuge there, trusting to the remoteness of the peninsula, for only one 
point touched the mainland. The garrison of Carrickfergus Castle 
issued out one night — ^in the middle of the night — marched into the 
island, and history and the tradition of the country, the Earl of Claren- 
don and all contemporary writers agree, that they raised the people out 
of their beds, that they bayoneted them and piked them, and drove 
them before them, gathering them in, Tintil they goaded them to the 
edge of tha brink and then — over. They must have been dead before 
they reached the bottom, but you can imagine such a sc-ene as that, in 
the dead of night — the shrieks of women, and all the J-KDrrors of that 
terrible event. In one of his lectures Mr. Froude caUs this in question. 



JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTUEE ON " FROUDE'S CEUSADE." 73 

and argues that it did not take place exactly at that date, &c. I go by 
the authority of Lord Clarendon, and by the tradition of the country* 
which I have heard a hundred times, from Catholics and Protestants, 
that there were three thousand persons slaughtered on that night, and, 
as it occurred in November of 1641, before ever there was any violence, 
therefore it was by way of retaliation — most strictly ! 

I don't intend to enter into any details. My simple desire was to 
clear myself and my fellow Protestants of Ireland from all complicity 
with Mr. Froude and his Protestants. I want no distinction — ^no 
solidarity with Froude. K I have succeeded in showing; that the PrO" 
testants of Ireland are not all stibmissi-*^ clU«*is ot ths'b ges^ileoMUiy } 
have succeeded in all that I attes^pied- ; 



FEOUDE'S PEINCIPLES OF GOYERNMENT 



In his book, " The English in Ireland," Mr. Froude advances the fol- 
lowing principles as those in which England's rule over Ireland finds 
justification. Mr. Phillips, as an American freeman, naturally enough 
excepts to Mr. Froude's code in the lecture which follows. The " pnn- 
ciples " of themselves are assuredly worthy of record in this age and 
country of ours. Here they are : 

A- natural rigM to liberty, irrespective of the ability to defend it, exists 
neither in individuals nor in nations. The superior part has a natural right 
to govern ; the inferior a natural right to be governed ; and the test is to be 
found in the relative strength of the different orders of human beings. Among 
wild beasts and savages, Mr. Froude argues, might makes right. Among reason- 
able beings, right is forever tending to make might. Superior intelligence and 
character compensate for inferiority of numbers. The better sort of men willingly 
submit to be governed by those who are nobler and wiser than themselves. The 
faculty of organization creates superiority of force. The ignorant and the selfish 
are thus justly compelled to obey a rule which delivers them fi-om their own 
natural weakness. No person has an inherent privilege to lead an unworthy life, 
when he can be forced upon a more honorable career. The rights of man are not 
to liberty, but to wise direction and control. The right of a peoi^le to self-govern- 
ment consists only in their power to defend themselves. All societies of men are 
naturally forced into relations with other societies of men. They are natural 
friends or natural rivals ; they accordingly either agree fo unite, or else find 
themselves in , collision, when the weaker gives way. On the whole, superior 
strength is the equivalent of superior merit. When a weaker people are compelled 
to part with their separate existence, and are permitted to share the privileges of 
the nation in which ihey are absorbed, they forfeit nothing which they should 
care to lose, and rather gain than suffer by the exchange. There is no freedom 
possible to man except in obedience to law, and those who cannot prescribe a 
law to themselves must be content to accept direction from others. Liberty is 
only the privilege of those who can govern themselves better than others can 
govern them. They who are able to govern themselves need not petition for a 
boon which they can take for themselves. 

Before reading the lecture of Mr Phillips, the reader's attention is in- 
vited to the comment upon this notable code made by a leading Amer- 
ican journal — the New York Tribune, as follows : 

" From the announcement of these principles of government, which virtually 
coincide with the odious theories of Thomas Hobbes, that were so stoutly resisted 
by the great thinkers of the seventeenth century as sapping the foundations of 
civil society, and in which the sense of ju.stice is absorbed in the consciohsness of 
power, THE TRANSITION IS EASY TO THE DEFENSE OF TUE OP- 
PRESSION WHICH SUBJECTED THE AMERICAN COLONIES TO THE 
CAPRICES OF BRITISH DESPOTISM, AND WHICH STILL HOLDS A 
BRAVE AND GENEROUS PEOPLE IN THRALDOM TO AN ARBITRARY 
FOREIGN RULE." 



KEYIEW OF MR. FROUDE. 



LECTUEE AT TEEMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON, DECEMBER 3, 187S, 

BT 

"WEISTDELL PHILLIPS. 



Ladies akd Gentleman — I am to oflfer to you one or two suggestions touching Mr. 
Froude's lecture on the relations of Great Britain and Ireland. He said he came here 
to argue his case before the American people as a jury, and in my narrow way I wish 
to use the hour you lend to me to-night in rendering a verdict. It was a great privil- 
edge to hear an English scholar's view of these critical relations between England and 
Ireland; it was a theme deeply interesting to every student of English literature and 
politics, and the interest was deepened into gratitude when with generous purpose he 
gave the receipts of these lectures to the sufferers of our great conflagration I was 
gratified, also, at the channel which he chose for his address to the American people — 
the lyceum It was a marked recognition of this new form for the public discussion of 
great national questions, it was a compliment, •well deserved, to the* impartiality and 
intelligence of the audiences which make up the great American lyceum. Of course, 
being Froude, it was brilliant and picturesque in narrative, graphic, instructive, and if 
lie did not bring us many new facts, at least in the manner in which he told old ones he re- 
vealed the mood, the temper of mind in which England looks at the question to-day, and 
that of itself is a great revelation. Home Tooke said once, when Gibbon wi'ote his auto- 
biography, that a man who had anything to conceal ought to do anything rather than write 
his own life, that he should, beg his worst enemy to write it before be trusted the uncon- 
scious betrayal of what he would have been but too willing to conceal. So I think in 
the mode, in the standpoint, in the whole inspiration ot these fine testimonies to the relation 
of Great Britain and Ireland we have the latest an&the most authentic, and the most trust * 
worthy declaration of the mode in which the leading Englishmen of to-day regard the Irish 
question . We all had reason to expect a scholar's treatment, to expect that he would bring 
order out of chaos, that the tangled web of this Irish history which had confused all 
students and puzzled the most paient inquirer, would be sti-aightened out and cleared up. 
For one, I never expected the exact statement, the close narrative, the logical sequences 
or the instinct of the historian, for I tMnTc it cannot he said that Mr. Froude has ever 
writtem anything that deserrves the name of history. Fairly judged, he is a fervent 
brilliant and earnest writer of party pamphlets, and grouping together these whole fine 
presentations of the Irish question ; after all they are so discordant, so partisan, so frag- 
mentary, so one-sided, that it only runs in the line with the character of his whole 
literary work. If he had not had occasion to name frequently the O'Connells, the 
O'Neills, the O'Briens, the Geraldines and th0 Desmonds, I should hardly have known, 
as I listened, that it was an Irish story. In my hasty way I have had occasion to study 
somewhat at length the history of Ireland in its relation to the British government, and I 
confess, with the exceptions of the dates and the names, I should not have recognized the 
picture which the brilliant essayist drew. I remember once Mrs. Butler read for us a strik 
ing extract from Marmion. I have declaimed it, listened to it, sung it, and crooned it over 
a hundred times, and when I heard it announced it seemed to me it would be but a tame 
piece to listen to ; but when the deep-studied and nnequaled voice, and that soul that 
permeates all her public readings, gave me the piece anew, I thought I had never seen 
it at all. 



76 PHILLIPS' REPLY TO FROUDE. v 

60, when I listened to this history of Fronde's, taking out the names and the dates, I 
did not recognize the story. No doubt, it was fair enough to England. With rare jus- 
tice, he painted her as black as she deserved. That is honestly to be said. But having 
given one broad, liberal black pigment to the whole canvas, he tookit all off and brightened 
up the lines. As it was said of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he would proclaim an artist 
the first of painters, and then in detail deny Mm every quality of the artist, so Fronde 
having told us in a sentence of marvelous frankness that Elizabeth was chargeable with 
every fault that a ruler could commit^ that she lacked every quality of a worthy ruler, 
went on piece by piece to say that in no other possible way but the one she did could she 
have met the exigencies of her reign. Then when you turn to Ireland every statement! 
, think of the Englishman is false ; false in this sense, that it clutched at every idle tale that 
reflected upon Ireland, while it subjected to just and merciless scrutiny every story that 
told against England. He painted the poverty, the anarchy, the demoralization, the 
degradation of Ireland for the last three centuries, as if it stood out exceptional in 
Europe, as if every other kingdom was bright, and this was the only dark and disgust- 
)Qg spot on the continent ; whereas he knew, and would not if questioned have denied, 
that the same poverty, the same reckless immorality , the same incredible ignorance, which 
he attributed io, Ireland, was true of France at that day, true of England at the same 
period, truer still of Scotland at every date that he named. And then when he came to 
the public men of Ireland he painted them monsters of corruption, steeped in the ' 
utmost subserviendy, in the most entire readiness to traffic for votes and principlea 
when he knew that, all that being granted, these men were only toiling and panting in theis 
narrow capacity to lift themselves up to the level of the corruption of their English bro- 
ethrs ! He painted every leading Irishman but Grattan either as a noisy demagogue or 
a childish sentimentalist, and er^en Grattan, when he said that he was honest, he finally 
ended by painting him as a simpleton. I know that you can pick out of his lectures here 
and there a just sentence of acknowledgment ; but I am endeavoring to give the result 
of all the discourses — the impression , that would be left on the patient listener after 
hearing them all. Now, it seems to me that all this indicates the partisan, the pamph- 
letefax, the pleader of a cause, not an impartial searcher after a great truth or the 
generoua and frank acknowledgment of a great national error. Some men were sur- 
prised th;it ."in Englishman should bring to this country a question of apparently so little 
interest as tJio relations of Ireland, but it would be only a superficial thinker that would 
be led into that mistake. The relations of Ireland are the gravest, the most important 
feature of England's political life. Eight years ago I was hissed.in Cooper Institute for 
having said that England was a second-rate power on the chess-board of Europe, bo i 
to-day her journalists have ceased to deny the fact, and are engaged in an explanation 
of why she is so. And the two great influences which made her fall from a first-class 
power are the neglect and oppression of her owti masses and seven centuries of unadul- 
terated and infamous oppression of Ireland. Mr. Fronde told us with epigrammatic 
force and great truth, that the wickedness of nations was always punished, that; no 
matter how long Providence waited, in the end the wickedness of one generation was 
answered by the weakness of another. Etfgland has held for seven centuries to the 
lips of her sister Ireland a poisoned chalice. Its ingredients were the deepest contempt, 
the most unmeasured oppression, injustice, such as the world never saw before. As 
Mr. Froude said, Providence is to-day holding back that same cup to the lips of the 
mother country, wliich has, within a dozen years, felt the deep punishment of her long 
injustice to Ireland. Ten years ago, when Germany pressed to the wall the small king- 
dom of Denmark, which gave to England her Princess of Wales, England longed to 
draw her sword ; when, two years ago, Bismarck snubbed her in the face of all Europe, 
again and agai>% insulted her, smote her actually in the face, England longed to draw 
tier sword, bu> nhe knew right well that the first cannon that she fired at any first-rate 
power, Ir«>>ml would stab her*in the back. Checkmated, she cuonot move on the 



PHILLIPS' REPLY TO S^ROUDE. ■ 77 

cfaesB-board of the great powers, and one of the great causes of this crippling of her 
powers is the Irish question. 

I do not wonder at all that the thoughitful Englishman should long to explain to the 
world, if he can, how the steps by which his country has been brought to this state have 
been inevitable, that by no wit of statesmanship, by no generosity of high-toned and 
magnanimous honor could she have avoided the path in whicli she is treading. If Mr. 
Froude could make out that proposition ; if he could convince the world through the 
American people that England accepted the inevitable fate which the geographical 
proximity of Ireland had entailed upon her, it would have gone half way to wipe out» 
the dots on his country's fame. I do not wonder he should make the attempt. I 
beliora that instead of England's having conquered Ireland, that in the true, essential 
statement of the case, as it stands to-day Ireland has conquered England .' She has 
summoned her before the bar of the wvilized ??orld to judge the justice of her legisla. 
tion ; she has checkmated her as a power on the chess-board of Europe ; she has 
monopolized the attention of her statesmen ; she has made her own island the pivot 
upon which the destiny of England turns, and her last great statesman and present 
prime minister, Mr. Gladstone, owes whatever fame he has to the supposition that at 
last he has devised a way by which he can conciliate Ireland and save his own country 
But in all the presentations of the iease it seems to me that our Eaglish friend has beea 
a partisan and not a judge. Let me illlustrate in one or two instances what I consider 
the justice of this charge. The population of Ireland, previous to 1811, is wholly 
matter of gues^ There never was a census until after this century had opened. Sir 
William Pettie, Fynes Morrison, the secretary of Lord Mountjoy, and others hava 
formed an estimate of the different periods of the population of Ireland. Now, what ] 
^arge as a proof of partisanship is that whenever it served his purpose to adopt a 
small guess in order to excuse an English injustice or to bear hardly down on the criti' 
cal condition of the Irish, he has always selected the smallest possible estimate. When- 
ever it served his purpose, on the contrary, to exaggerate the moral inefficiency of the 
Irish people, the divided councils, the quarrelsome generations, the totally inefficient race, 
compared with some interval of English rule, he has always adopted the largest guess. 
For instance, the historian's estimate of the popj'ation of Ireland was made about the 
year 1600, the beginning of the seventeenth century, which was made by Fynes Morri- 
son. He puts it at from 500,000 ■ to 600,000 men. Mr. Froude adopts this when he 
wants to say that James I., in confiscating six of the best counties in Ireland and settling 
them on his followers, was not very harmful, because, he says, there were very few 
inhabitants in Ireland, and room enough for a great many more. I do not see myself by 
what principle he would justify a despot in confiscating the counties of Essex, Suffolk 
Norfolk, Middlesex, Bristol and Worcester, Massachusetts, turn out all the inhabitant* 
and give the property to aliens, because there was a great deal of vacant land in 
Nebraska ! I do not see the exact moral principle by which this can be done. Then he 
brings ub down to 1641-'49, the era when Cromwell, with 14,000 troops, subdued 
Ireland. Then if is his purpose as an advocate to swell Irelajid into, large proportions 
and show you a great people swept like a herd of stags before one single powerful 
English hand. Then he tells you that Sir William Petfie nad estimated the population 
of Ireland in 1641 at a million and a half of human beings, an estimation which Hallara 
calls prodigiously vain, and it is one of the most marvelous estimates in history. Here 
was an island, poverty-stricken, scourged by war, robbed of itc .,oil,*and still it had 
trebled in population iu about thirty-eight years, when, witl' ili our multitudinous and 
uncounted emigration, with all our swelling prosperity, with all our industry and 
peace, with all our fruittul lands and no touch of war; with all this, it took our country 
more time than that to treble. It took France 166 years to treble, but this poverty- 
•tricken, war-ridden, decimated, starved race trebled in a quarter of the time. How 
met, having put down that 5^1nt the advan«te goes on iu order to exascerate tlw 



n PHILLIPS' REPLY TO FROUDE. 

trebled immorality and frightfii] fratricidal nature of Irish life, and tells you that in A« 
next nine years this curious population, wich had trebled four times quicker than any 
other nation in Europe, lost 600,000 in the wars. How the wars became so 
much more dangerous and bloody and exhaustive in these nine years than in 
the thirty-eight years before, nobody explains. He tells us there were 900,000 
men, women and children when Cromwell came to Ireland. These 900,000 
were the old, the young, the women, the decrepit, the home-keepers. Cromwell landed 
with 14,000 men, and how many did he meet ? How many did this population send out 
to meet him ? Two hundred thousand men ! Every other man in the island went out. 
■^hen France elevated herself with gigantic energy to throw back the utter disgrace of 
German annihilation, how many men did she put in the field? One in fifty. When 
Germany moved to the contest for the imperial dignity of Europe, raised all her power 
to crush France in that terrific struggle, how many did she raise ? One in thirty-five. 
When the South, in her terrible conflict with us, W(§s said to have emptied evei-y thing 
but her graveyards into the camps, how many did she send out ? One in twenty. But 
this poverty-stricken, decimated, women and children population, went out one in four I 
[Laughter.] Massachusetts, stirred to the bottom, elevated to a heroic enthusiasm, in 
the late war, sett out how many ? One in sixteen. Massachusetts, swelling, earnest, 
prosperous, peaceful for forty years, fuU of adult, robust men, sends out one in sixteen, 
or one in eighteen, it is hard to say precisely ; but Ireland, wasted by a hundred gears' 
war, sent one in four, if you will believe Mr. Fronde. There never was such a nation on 
the face of the earth. Well, all I can say is that if 900,000 sick, infants, men and dd 
women, contrive to put an army of 200,000 into the field to fight a nationality that is 
trying to crush them, God crush the nation that ever dare to lift a hand against itl 
[Applause.] But that is the idlest tale in the world, of course. She never raised the 
army ; no creditable authority ever supposes it. She had probably 30,000 or 40,000 men 
in the field in different parts of Ireland, and that would give her a much larger army 
than any other nation of similar size was ever supposed to Bend into the field, and Mr. 
Froude says they all united against Cromwell, whereas they were aboue tqually divided 
among themselves, and that discussion was worse than English arras. But you see it 
was necessary to make out the picture that we should get a large army of 2:^5.000 men, 
because otherwise it would not have been possible for the brilliant essayist to end ofl 
with his usual figure that after one or two stalwart blows they all disappeared like a 
snow-drift before the sun. Yes, that is a favorite phrase ; it occurs half a dozen timei 
in describing the defeat of the Irish army, and if it is wanting, then comes another thaj 
they were like straw set on fire. Cromwell went to Drogheda and massacred erery 
living being ; he went to Wexford and met with stalwart resistance, and then fleshed 
his sword in blood with a barbarity which even Macaulaj hesitates to describe. " At 
last Ireland knelt dovra at his feet." Knelt, did she ? Well, the next city he went t* 
was Clonmel, and she resisted so gallantly that he granted her honorable terms. !■ 
Kilkenny nothing but the treachery of some persons inside the walls would have got 
Cromwell inside, and he himself said, " I never could have touched you, if you had not 
a traitor t'other side of the walls." That did not look much like a snow-drift. Bat 
Scotland is the great ideal of our eloquent friend. It was Sf'oiland that never made • 
misstep; it was Scotland that exhibiied the finest qualities of nfttiiinal unanimity. Wdi 
this great English soldier went to Ireland, and had spent a year, and after massacreing, 
butchering two cities, and having a hard fight with two more, and leaving them witk 
compliments and honors, and then unable, even then, to leave Ireland tiH the Protestanti 
betrayed their own Ireland, this same soldier went to model Scotland, high-toned, dii* 
valrouB, united, brave, ideal Scotland, fought two battles, took one dty, had no butcherjy 
and in six months left it subjected. Is that a snow-drift T Bather it is more of a tnow 
drift than Ireland. I claim no praise for Ireland especiMly. She did make no Tei^ 
gallant resistance, broken up into races, divided by sectiu worn by centuries of «pprfl» 



PHELLIPS' REPLY TO FEOUBE. 70 

sion. When Grattan, with his heroic energy, and by the power of his simple life and 
eloquent tongue, elevated Ireland into tiie union of 1782, taking advantas^e with 8tat,<-»- 
nianlike iusiglit of the fjreat opportunity of Pilngland's affairs, Mr. Fronde has nn 
praise for hiiu, and he teiU us that the constitution ho founded, if allowed to live, 
would have amounted to nothing, because every Irish member of Parliament was cor- 
rupt; and he told us of this man offering himself tor sale, and another asking for ii 
thousajod pounds, and when he had painted the infamy of the trtiiKc, he ssid, where is 
Grattan ? It was a just and honorable testimony aj^amst political corruption, and did 
honor to him who made it. Cannot we see that this effort is made to prove that 
nation is uufit to be trusted with self-government ? Cannot we see that the man 
points to the Irish Parliament, with such a leader as li rattan, and says it is unfit to be 
trusted with a constitution, until some wiser, pure-minded race is allowed to inter- 
vene and save tliem from themselves ? May we not ask where is that race to be found, 
and are you sure that you will find it in London, composed iu equal parts of Scotch 
aud English members of the House of Commons ? Scotland sold Charles I. to his ene- 
mies, the old English nation, for 400,000 pounds. That is angelic! The French Mia- 
ister of Louis XIV. reported to the French Government the names of the men who 
took mimey to sell their country in the time of Charles II. — every great name except 
that of Kussell, the younger Hampden, Algernon Sidney, and all the great names that 
figure in a boy's rhetoric at college. Will you go down a little further? Walpole, 
after being expelled from the House of Comnmns, becomes afterwards ths Prime Min- 
ister of that respectable body, and boasts that he knows t!ie price of every man in it, 
and dies the inhabitant of a paLice filled with the plunder of his official life. Chat- 
ham, that name that no stain ever touched, becomes the paymaster of the English 
forces, and refuses to steal the interest of the public funds and put it in his pocket ; 
and Grattan says such honesty astonished Europe. Macaulay says such integrity was 
nut known among poiiticians. Miss Martineau says his course was incredible, and 
King Gaorye II. said that an honest man like that was an honor to human nature, i' 
a simple honesty like tliat astonished the world, what must the world have been t 
Well, that same picking and stealing, which Chatham disclaimed to touch, was well 
known to have been the foundation of the princely fortunes of the house of Holland. 
Tiiis is the angelic nation that comes down to hel^poor Ireland, and before whom does 
Mr. Fronde first make tliis argument? To whom, on his landing on this soil, does he 
offer it? To an audience of New York, where, if lie had said it three years before, it 
would have taken a lantern infinitely brighter than Diogenes' to have found one honest 
man in the City or State Government. Why, it seems to me an actual impudence, aa- 
tounding, to give that as a reason why the constitution of Grattan could not have suc- 
ceeded. How should we have bonin it if Tweed had lived in 1790, and some Eaglish- 
meu had proposed that the. sons of George III., with their mistresses, should come 
over here, and the members of the House of Commons, and help New York to an hon- 
est government ? It seems to me that the painter of such «» picture is not a fair judge 
of the condition of Ireland. Then again, take this very criiicism on Henry Grattan, 
Wolfe Tone of 1782, who undertook, under the constitution, to carry out the nation- 
ality of their country. 

Mr. ITroude read us with great nausea, some very absurd proclamations that pro- 
ceeded from the pen of Wolfe Tone, but remember, that there have been a great many 
silly proclamations, and it does not prove at all, because a man's head may have been 
carried away with the excitement of the controversy, he may not be an h()nest man 
and a patriot after all. What was it that turned the hearts of the young men of Ire- 
land of that heroic day? Why, he tells us that it was the French revolution, the revoin- 
tioa that was a tornado and earthquake combined. It swept up in its great maelstrom 
Mackintosh, Jefferson, the Duke of Richmond, aad the finest intellects of Europe, it 
«wept kingdoms from their places, and even agitated this young republic. It wan uo 



80 PHILLIPS' REPLY TO F£OUDE. 

fault of GrattaD,it was the common misfortuue of that generation that the violeno* 
of the French revolution upset the hopes and rendered useless the labors of many a 
patient and great aoul. It is not to be thrown upon Grattan as an evidence that he 
lacked common secse and statesmanship, but only that in common with all Europe he 
felt the violence of that critical period in the history of the human race. Mr. Froude 
never mentioned the name of any man who played a part in Ireland's history, with the 
exception of Grattan, but that he sneered at him. Hugh O'Neil, brought up in the 
court of Elizabeth, brought up in the knowledge of the chivalry of the day, the moment 
he throws off the gilded slavery and his foot touches the soil of nis native island, rose 
at the head oflF his people to fling of the yoke. And Mr. Froude says — what ? He 
tells U8 the story that a wolf, treated as a dog, is still a wolf — that 4s an Insbman. 
But when Robert Bruce, educated in the same way, in the court of Edward, flunn 
away the gilded chains as soon as he could, and drew the sword for Scotland, and 
hurled defiance at England, then, in the language of Mr. Froude, he is a patriot, and 
Scotland is a model kingdom. He never compares Bruce to a wolf. And when 
William the Silent left the Court of Spain and the moment he reached Holland, flung 
defiance at Spain, he is not a wolf, it is only an Irishman who follows humbly at a 
great distance' these illustrious examples, or preceding them sets them the example of 
this patriotic course, that is a wolf treated as a dog, and still remaining a wolf. 

1 iipppal, said Mr. Phillips, to the grand jury of the American people, whether a 
nation that cannot rule a nation except with the sword, after 700 years, is not bound 
to give up ; that in endeavoring to rule another race it has no policy except extermina- 
tion, is it not bound to give up ? For seven hundred years proud and conceited Eng- 
land hrts been governing impoverished Ireland under the pretence that Ireland cannot 
take care of itself. I say let her try ! Mr. Froude says, why if Ireland wants it we 
will let her go, but we know it will be to anarchy. Still I say, let her try. Suppose 
she fiiiln, suppose that her statei^iuen f;iil her, whose fault will it be ? Her own T I 
submit not. Suppose a man were kidnapped, gagged, bound, robbed, abused, and 
thrown on board a ship and taken to sea; and suppose that in mid-ocean his captors 
relented and said: '* AVe have done wrong; we must let him go;" and if they let him 
loope and flung him unbound into the sea, and he sank and were drowned — whos« 
f:uilt would it be ? If I were an Irishman, I know I should be a Fenian; I should 
have fcliowed Smith OBrlen. At last, however, taught by the long experience, con 
vinced by the intellect and proved statesmanship of Grattan and O'Connell, Mr. Glad- 
stone turns himself to tiie problem. Disraeli stands by his side. Every great nation 
in Europe fe<'ls that until this question is settled England can never draw a sword, 
while her i^cholars come over to this other branch of the English race, to claim of us h 
verdict Ihat «liall be a salre to a conscience that has vo rest, haunted by the ghosU of 
Elhabelhs and Hcnrija that have made the blond of the Saxon race infamous on the 
records of history. 

LETTER FROJSl MR. PHILLIP?. 

To a friend in New York, Mr. Phillips lias written concerulug the abore 

Lc(;tiire as follows : — 

" Dv.xn .Sin :— I put my lit'art into that talk (reply to Froude), under- 
standing that Froiifli-'s ar^Miment was th« principle that a merciful de8- 
potirtni was a oiuMhinjj necessary — which the Fourth of July and the 
De< laratioii o( ln<l('peiuli'nct' rcpuili.ite. Then, he never would allow that 
any lri^^tl^lau, even l>v chuuoe, ever bhuulered into a virtue." 

WE.NDEiL Phillips. 



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